The much anticipated even hyped Midwest and Northeast snowstorm delivered as promised late week with as much as 18 inches falling in Chicago’s northwest suburb of Gurnee while up to 21 inches fell north of Boston. 6-9 inches fell within the Philadelphia-New York corridor. The cold during as well as after the storm was brutal with snow falling while at 10 degrees in New York while it was near 0 in Boston, that’s about as cold as it get’s during a Northeast snowstorm. To make matters worse, winds blowing at 20-40 mph widely made for frigid sub 0 wind chills as far south as Washington and Baltimore.

Check out this stunning visible satellite image from NASA of the carpet of white left behind by the storm.

Note the south cover extends well south of the Capital region and with arctic high pressure sweeping in, so last night was comfortably the coldest of the season to date.

Here are the snow totals across the Midwest.

The storm kicked out of the Midwest Thursday night and so Friday morning was coldest with Chicago plummeting to -12, the coldest reading since mid January 2009.

Here are the snow totals from across the Northeast.

While not shown, several inches fell in the Washington area.

The stunning visible satellite images captured by NASA were thanks to the clearing out of the clouds as clear, dry arctic air took over, making good use of the highly reflective snow cover.

It was cold yesterday throughout the region as the sun warms the lower atmosphere minimally when you’ve got a solid snowpack on the ground. Most of the incoming solar radiation get’s deflected back up to space, maximising the power of the arctic air mass.

Of course, clear skies and arctic air means it turns frigid by night, worse with even the slightest breeze.

Midwest, Northeast Cold Is NOTHING Compared To What’s Coming Sunday Through Wednesday!

A fresh surge of arctic air is now pushing into the Northern Plains and this is an event that could re-write the history books and is near certain to be the worst arctic blast for the country since 1994.

So just how cold will this upcoming blast be compared to normal numbers for this time of year?

Wind Chills In The 70s Below?

Yes, as well as the cold air, there will be a lot of wind with this arctic blast and when combining air temperatures of -20 to -40 and adding a 15-25 mph wind, you’ve got dangerous wind chills of 50 to 70 below zero and that will be the case from North Dakota all the way down through Iowa into Illinois.

Here’s a great graphic from the Twin Cities NWS.

Check out the ECMWF 500mb/850mb temps for the upcoming days and just look at the air mass that’s diving south. It would seen the entire polar vortex is dropping south.

Sun 5

Mon 6

Tue 4

Another Snowstorm Leads Mother Of All Cold Waves!

While the trough following the Northeast snowstorm leaves, a new trough descends upon the Northern Rockies/Plains and as the truly brutal cold gets pulled south, a new storm system forms along the arctic boundary and this will bring a new swath of snow from the Southern Plains up through Missouri, parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan up into Ontario. Upwards of a foot of snow is possible with this next system but as this storm lifts north, so it will bring a BRIEF warm-up to the East Coast with precip falling as rain.

Here’s the latest surface chart from the ECMWF.

As the storm pushes up into Quebec, so the motherlode of arctic air comes crashing into the heartland Monday. Core of astonishing 486 thickness values focuses on eastern Minnesota and most of Wisconsin but the 498 line extends all the way to southern Missouri with values as low as 522 down to the Arkansas-Louisiana border. Those are rare values and thus supporting temperatures anywhere from 30 to 50 below normal Sunday through early Wednesday.

Here’s that system pushing up into Canada where a significant snowstorm and possible blizzard will occur but look at those thickness values within a 1040mb high.

ECMWF snow chart through 48 hours shows swath from northeast Oklahoma to southern Ontario.

That fresh snow cover will help minimise this push of extreme cold!

(MAIN IMAGE: Courtesy of Barry Butler Photography @barrybutler9)

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How Cold Could It Get?

Here’s tonight and you clearly see the severity of cold dropping out of Canada with that -18 in Minneapolis.

As tonight introduces the front of the really bitter cold, this set’s the stage for an EXTREMELY COLD DAY tomorrow over North Dakota and Minnesota in particular with daytime highs failing to get above -20.

As you can see from the graphic above, the flakes flying in St Louis and Chicago, that’s the snowstorm pushing through during tomorrow but note the temperature.

By tomorrow night into Monday that snowstorm is exiting and so the hammer comes down with lows plunging towards -30 in Minneapolis and -20 in Chicago. Even Kansas City and St Louis will near -10.

Monday is the coldest of cold days with HIGHS widely staying below 0 from Canada all the way down to near the Kentucky border. St Louis may see a rare day which struggles to get above 0 while most of Tennessee stays below 20, only 25 in Atlanta and even staying in the 30s as far south as New Orleans.

The major plunge particularly for the south comes Monday night into Tuesday when the low drops into single digits in Atlanta which will be the coldest reading since January 2003.

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Tags: arctic blast, arctic outbreak, cold, cold wave, coldest arctic blast in 20 years