Bitterly cold air arrives after Thanksgiving

Temperatures have been gradually dropping over the last 2 weeks across the Weather First area, but it doesn’t compare to what is coming down the Siberian pipeline later this week…

A fast moving cold front will be tracking through the area Thursday morning, with the only indication of the frontal passage being a shift in the wind to out of the northwest. These breezy northwest winds will begin to usher in a bitterly cold arctic air mass that will set up shop across our area for quite some time.

Temperatures on Friday will be frigid, with highs in the low 20F’s for most of the area. Winds are also expected to be on the breezy side out of the northwest, likely resulting in wind chills closer to 0F.

Winds decrease in intensity into next weekend, but so do the temperatures! Highs will only climb into the mid to upper teens all of next weekend and into the following week, with overnight lows in the single digits! The coldest night appears to be next Sunday night into Monday morning, with a low of around 4F.

Temperatures may begin to rebound by the middle of the following week, but it’s hard to say if this will indeed happen with it being so far out in time.

The set up for this arctic air outbreak across the United States is fairly typical of one in January or February. Cold air originating over Siberia is already building across the flat, boggy terrain of central Canada. All it will need is a little push southeast and it will send the thermometers across the northern United States crashing.

That push arrives in the form of a large upper level trough of low pressure that develops by the middle of this week and hangs around for quite some time. Winds and high surface pressures behind the trough will be what pushes the cold, Siberian air southeast across the United States.

It’s going to be an interesting weekend with the bitterly cold air across the Upper Midwest, especially for folks off east downwind of the Great Lakes…could see some hefty snow totals out that way!