midwest winter storm
With hurricane force winds, typhoon, Nuri hit Alaska’s Aleutian Islands over the weekend and sent Arctic air barreling through Canada and into the United States. With more than five weeks before winter officially starts, most of the US will be battling frigid temperatures by the end of the week. Dallas is expected to drop to 26 degrees, New Orleans 41, Atlanta 30 and Memphis 19. Most states will have much lower temperatures than normal very early in the season.
The Arctic air swooped down across northern California, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, bringing with it, snowfall. Travelers can hit the ski resorts in California and Colorado early this resort season. Montana has received the greatest snowfall with at least four feet in many areas. The early snowfall can also be directly blamed for several multiple-vehicle wrecks across the nation. With only four inches of snow but visibility limited even further by fog, Lafayette, Indiana’s Interstate 65 was the site of several accidents totaling 13 cars and two semitrailers. On Sunday, up to 70 cars were videotaped colliding on the snow covered US 41/45 in Germantown, just north of Milwaukee.
The temperatures haven’t dropped this low since the 1990’s and for states as far east as North Carolina, not since the late 1980’s. Normally, its 40 degrees in Great Falls, Montana this time of year. Instead, the temperature in Great Falls at the beginning of the week was a teeth-chattering seven degrees. With the central US looking forward to temperatures dropping down to the teens and every state with temperatures 20-40 degrees below normal, we’d expect it to be a temporary flux in the weather. Unfortunately, you’d be mistaken. The fact is this unseasonably cold weather will be blanketing the country for the next several weeks with the possibility of running straight into winter making it one of the longest winter seasons ever.
