Forecasters are warning of treacherous holiday travel and life-threatening cold for much of the nation as an arctic air mass blows into the already-frigid southern United States.
“We’re looking at much-below normal temperatures, potentially record-low temperatures leading up to the Christmas holiday,” said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The incoming arctic front brings “extreme and prolonged freezing conditions for southern Mississippi and southeast Louisiana,” said the National Weather Service in a special weather statement Sunday.
Forecasted temperatures for Christmas morning 2022
Courtesy of the National Weather Service
By Thursday night, temperatures will plunge as low as 13 degrees in Jackson, Mississippi; and around 5 degrees in Nashville, Tennessee, the National Weather Service predicts.
For much of the United States, the winter weather will get worse before it gets better.
The coming week has the potential for “the coldest air of the season” as the strong arctic front marches across the eastern two-thirds of the country in the days before Christmas, according to the latest forecasts from the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.
The center warned of a “massive expanse of frigid temperatures from the Northern Rockies/Northern Plains to the Midwest through the middle of the week, and then reaching the Gulf Coast and much of the Eastern U.S. by Friday and into the weekend.”
No white Christmas in Florida, but lows in the 20s
Florida will not have a white Christmas, but forecasters are expecting that weekend to be unusually cold throughout the state.
Northern Florida cities such as Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and Pensacola have predicted lows in the 20s on Christmas Eve, with highs of about 40.
In Atlanta, where temperatures are set to drop below freezing early Monday morning, forecasters warn of even colder air by late in the week, according to the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City, Georgia. The low Friday night in Atlanta will be around 13 degrees with the high temperature Saturday still below the freezing mark at around 29 degrees, the Weather Service projects.
Frigid temps follow a severe winter storm in the Northeast
The polar air arrives as an earlier storm system gradually winds down in the northeastern U.S. after burying parts of the region under two feet of snow. More than 80,000 customers in New England were still without power on Sunday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.
Utility companies brought in extra workers from other states but were hampered by slick roads and dangerous conditions.
“This was a heavy, wet snow so that had impacts on both travel and the infrastructure,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Police across New England responded to hundreds of crashes or vehicles sliding off the road this weekend, and Maine State Police said Saturday night they had responded to more than 180 crashes since Friday evening.
Vermont officials said they’re finding locations for potential warming centers in the hardest-hit areas, in case they’re needed. State officials warned Saturday that some customers’ power may not be restored for two to three days.
“Last night we had some people come in who weren’t able to cook for themselves, and so we definitely made sure that we had room for them,” Becket Gourlay, a host at the Waterhouse Restaurant in Peterborough, New Hampshire, said on Sunday. “Even today we had some people who came in to watch the final match for the World Cup because their TVs were out.”
