"Low temperature records in one of the nation's coldest month in the U.S., particularly in the Midwest, are harder to crack. It's a pretty, uh, low bar, so to speak.
That said, one of coldest Arctic outbreaks in the past two decades is ready to plunge into the nation's Midwest, while also sweeping its shivering air into the East and South. Let's get to the bitter forecast details.
This Weekend: Cold Plunge Arrives
Sunday Highs
The bitter cold reinforcement arrives this weekend.
A low pressure system producing blizzard conditions in parts of North Dakota and northwest Minnesota will open the door to another bitter cold invasion from Canada.
Highs Saturday will remain below zero in much of North Dakota, northwest Minnesota, and northeast Montana.
Sunday morning lows will plunge into the 30s below zero in the coldest spots of northern Minnesota, and the 20s below zero over much of North Dakota and Minnesota, includingMinneapolis/St. Paul. Subzero lows are possible as far south as parts of Iowa, eastern Nebraska, and perhaps northwest Illinois.
Daytime high temperatures Sunday will likely remain below zero from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to eastern Montana. Coupled with strong winds behind an Ohio Valley winter storm, dangerous wind chills in the -50s and -60s are possible from northern Iowa and Minnesota into the Dakotas and eastern Montana.
The wild card playoff game at Green Bay's Lambeau Field Sunday afternoon will rank among the coldest on record, there, perhaps colder than the Jan. 20, 2008 NFC Championship Game, which had a game time temperature of -4 degrees.
Farther south, highs will struggle to top the teens in the mid-Mississippi Valley, including St. Louis and Kansas City.
The heart of this cold outbreak, however, will be felt Monday and Tuesday.
Monday/Tuesday: Coldest in Two Decades
Monday Highs
The bitter cold spreads south and east and reaches its peak Monday and Tuesday from the Plains to the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys.
Morning lows Monday may flirt with the 30s below zero over much of North Dakota, Minnesota, even northeast Iowa and western Wisconsin.
Subzero cold will plunge as far south as the Ozarks and Ohio Valley, including Lexington, Ky. and Springfield, Mo. Daily record lows are possible in at least two dozen cities from Texas to the Midwest including Minneapolis/St. Paul,Kansas City, and Austin, Texas.
Monday's highs, if you want to call them that, may not get to 10 degrees below zero as far south as Champaign, Ill., including Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
In fact, Monday's high in Chicago may threaten the all-time record coldest daily high temperature in the Windy City, -11 degrees on Jan. 18, 1994 and Christmas Eve 1983.
Highs may struggle to rise above zero Monday in Cincinnati, which would be the first time this has happened there since Jan. 20, 1985. Dating to 1872, the Queen City has only had five days where highs did not reach zero degrees.
With strong low pressure in Quebec and high pressure centered over the Plains, this bitter cold air will be accompanied by brisk west to northwest winds from 15-25 mph, sending wind chills into the -50s or even -60s in some areas from Ohio to North Dakota. Any exposed skin would suffer frostbite in 5-10 minutes in these conditions!
Tuesday AM Lows
Tuesday Highs
Tuesday morning lows will again plummet into the 20s below zero over much of the Upper Mississippi Valley, 10s below zero in much of the western Great Lakes and Ohio Valley, and below zero as far south as the southern Appalachians. Over 60 daily record lows may fall by the wayside Tuesday from the Deep South to the Northeast and Midwest.
Particularly notable will be the cold in the Ohio Valley Tuesday morning. For example, Toledo, Ohio may have its coldest morning in almost 20 years (Jan. 18-19, 1994), and may be within five degrees of its all-time record of -20 set on Jan. 21, 1984.
Tuesday's highs won't be quite as bitter cold in the Upper Midwest, but may be stuck below zero in parts of the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley. Furthermore, brisk west winds will still be in play over the Great Lakes, sending wind chills in the 30s, 40s, even 50s below zero from western New York to northern Minnesota.
In records dating to 1874, Detroit has only had five calendar days during which the daytime high has failed to reach zero, the last of which was their all-time coldest daily high, -4 degrees on Jan. 19, 1994. Tuesday's high in the Motor City may threaten that all-time record!
Jan. 19, 1994 was also the last time a daily high in Cleveland remained in subzero territory, the same year Jacobs Field (now Progressive Field), home of baseball's Cleveland Indians, opened.
Also shivering on Tuesday will be the Northeast, where single-digit highs are expected over much of the interior Northeast, and teens will anchor over the I-95 corridor including Boston, New York, Philly, and, perhaps, Washington, D.C."
(Hat tip The Weather Channel)
"Thanks, Al. Now here's the sports."
"The San Francisco 49ers have just announced they are forfeiting their game in Green Bay Sunday."
(Hat tip The Weather Channel)
"Thanks, Al. Now here's the sports."
"The San Francisco 49ers have just announced they are forfeiting their game in Green Bay Sunday."
I can get that from NOAA. Your point?
ReplyDeleteMy point? Al Gore is a fool.
ReplyDeleteBTW: How is Global Warming working for you since you live in the same state as Green bay?
I wonder if there is a profit to be made on a "Global Freezing" movement now. Maybe we could get Al Gore to sign on and claim all the oceans will be solid ice in the next decade. All we would need to do is to pay off some academics with grants to make the case. Then we could claim that a vast majority of scientists agree that it is "established science."
ReplyDeleteThere was a day when science was not up to majority rule. You had to actually prove your case and duplicate results in experiments and boring stuff like that.
How embarrassing it must be for the global warming, as it used to be called, people to see all these record cold records in the last decade or so.
@ Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteHere is just one point Siarlys: The Obama administration sends 7.4 billion dollars to foreign countries to fight "Global Warming", when this issue is pure B.S. This money could go to our armed forces personnel who have recently lost 1% of their pensions, through Congressional action. The armed forces get very low salaries to begin with and many are on welfare, food stamps and cannot get benefits for a decent living. Yet, Obama gives money to foreign countries for nothing.
Squid
I almost hope global warming is for real. Although I am pretty far inland, I am fairly close to a nice small river (I can see the bridge across it from my backyard/deck) and I have frontage on that road.
ReplyDeleteIf there is enough ice in the polar caps, maybe I could end up with waterfront, even oceanfront property?? Who knows??
Oh, THAT's what you were saying without saying. Everything about Global Warming is "pure BS." Well, having contributed three articles on the subject to two different publishers of reference works, I have researched the subject rather thoroughly for a non-specialist, and none of you are specialists either, except in misanthropy.
ReplyDeleteOK, back to basics. The problem with coming to ANY rational conclusion about climate change is that people tend to form opinions based on "How any I feeling TODAY?" So, if the midwest is having an uncharacteristically hot summer, with temperatures reaching 100 degrees (normal in souhtwestern Nebraska, not normal in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, or most of Iowa) people cry "Something must be done about global warming RIGHT NOW." On the other hand, it temperatures drop to zero for a week, someone in the peanut gallery cries "See, there is no Global Warming. It's all BS."
I think even Squid would agree that that, in itself, is no way to develop a coherent analysis based on hard science.
Last year in Milwaukee, we had a 60 degree day in December, we had no snow until well after Christmas, the temperatures seldom got as low as 20 degrees, and instead of snow for Christmas we had snow for Easter. It didn't last long, but it was unseasonable. It got thrown forward into the year for some reason.
If you want to look at long term trends, (cue the cracked voice of old age) 'When I was young, we walked to school in 15 below zero weather for a week at a time, several weeks, in the face of 25 mile an hour winds, and school wasn't cancelled unless there was a foot of snow on the ground.' This year, by contrast, we might get a week or two in single digits below zero.
So, as a presentation on the validity and integrity of a whole field of scientific investigation, this is a juvenile ear-wagging bit of doggerel. Does that prove global warming is happening? No, that requires analysis of several decades of data, AT LEAST. I am a bit more worried about the increasing frequency and wind speed of tornadoes and hurricanes, but all the people with advanced training say, its a concern, we can't say without many more years of observation whether this is the result of global warming.
Science is like that. Thus, politicians have difficulty understanding it, because they deal in today and tomorrow, not the long term. I do wonder why people are so determined to wait until its obvious, by which time it will be too late to do much, before we take ANY steps at all to possibly prepare ourselves or mitigate the likely damage.
There's also the damage to the oyster and clam and crab and lobster industries as increased concentration of CO2 in the oceans strips away or weakens the shells of the food source. Some clammers have taken to pouring quantities of lime into bays where they harvest oysters.
That's worth taking a look at.
But "Al Gore is a fool"? I've known that since at least 2000, when I termed the election "Anti-Christ vs. The Blob." (Al Gore was The Blob).
As for the armed forces, talk to the Republicans in congress who want to send them into harm's way but don't want to raise taxes to pay for their body armor, or their pensions.
@ Elmer Fudd,
ReplyDeleteDon't you wish it would turn out like that but according to Al Gore your whole house will be 9 foot underwater... probably in the next few months.
So just in case he is right we should restrict all OUR production with regulations while the Chinese and the Indians do nothing.
First of all there is a serious question that global warming is happening at all.
Next, you have to PROVE it is man-made.
Next, your have to PROVE that we can do anything about it even if we wanted to.
Last you have to convince the rest of the world not to be so stupid as to cripple their industries as well. (this aspect is never mentioned in the PR campaign for the Regulators' Full Employment Bill.)
All these are unlikely, some more than others but in combination, we are making all kinds of laws and regulation choking off existing and new industries and construction for what comes down to asinine assumptions.
News flash!
ReplyDeleteThe Chinese ice-breaker ship that saved the "Warmers" from the Russian research ship is now iced in and cannot move. The U.S. Coast Guard is sending an ice-breaker ship to save the passengers of the rescue ship.
So much for Global Warming melting ice.
Sairlys, I do agree that Al Gore is the "Blob". As for hard science, if it is conducted well, with a good hypothesis, a good scientific design and excellent data gathering, I would also agree with you. Unfortunately, some of the science of today is corrupted by offerings of grants and other money, to come up with the decision that suits the funder. I encounter more of this sort of thing today, than in the past.
Have a great day all of you in this thread.
Squid
Unfortunately, some of the science of today is corrupted by offerings of grants and other money, to come up with the decision that suits the funder.
ReplyDeleteCertainly it does Squid. And most (not all, but most) of the political denial that global warming could POSSIBLY be happening is in the same category of coming to a desired conclusion first, then shaping the conversation to sustain the denial.
What is really going on, and what the impacts will be, are not well established, because global climate and weather are incredibly complex systems. It does not help us arrive at the truth to have ANYONE solemnly (or comically) announcing that its ALL fully worked out OR that it couldn't possibly be happening.
The Arctic Ocean used to be frozen in all year round. Now, half of it melts every summer. Not a small difference. We can be glad it still does freeze up in the winter I suppose.
Anyway, there are other reasons to cut down on coal-burning. Recent research (not funded by anyone with an ax to grined), has established a tentative link between increased levels of mercury in groundwater, and homosexual behavior in wading birds. So, if you're worried about the "gay agenda," blame coal fired power plants.
(elwood, most likely your property will be burned over by an uncontrollable fire before you have any chance at ocean front property)
Update: The 49ers are very happy they did not follow Fousesquawk's recommendation and forfeit the game. I must admit, I thought Lambeau Field at this time of year provided the home team with an unbeatable advantage.
ReplyDelete