Forecasters are predicting a blast of Arctic air will blanket most the United States next week with record-breaking temperatures.

“Update: The @NWS is forecasting almost 290 daily #cold records (including record lows and record cold highs) Monday-Wednesday from the Plains to the East Coast,” Jonathan Erdman, meteorologist with the Weather Channel tweeted on Saturday about the National Weather Service’s forecast.

“For much of the country east of the Rockies, the cold wave could mean temperatures of up to 30 degrees below average, according to CNN meteorologist Taylor Ward,” the New York Post reported. Ward said:

We are in a pattern where multiple waves of cold are moving in from Canada and impacting the Central and Eastern US.One wave of cold came in late last week, another is moving in today and tomorrow, and the coldest blast by far moves in early next week.

The Post reported on the nationwide impact:

The cold front will plunge rapidly through the northern Plains and upper Midwest on Sunday, into the southern Plains and Ohio Valley on Monday and then through most of the East Coast by Tuesday, according to the Weather Channel.

Meanwhile, a storm system that moved through the Northeast late Thursday brought the first taste of winter to parts of the region.

“As of early Friday morning, snowfall reports between 1 and 3 inches were common from northwestern Pennsylvania into southern New England,” AccuWeather meteorologist Maura Kelly said in the Post report.

“The main story on Friday will be the bitter cold extending from the southern Plains to the East,” Kelly said,

“Then late this weekend the next storm system will begin to take shape across the Plains, which will bring the next round of snow and ice to the Plains and into the Northeast into the beginning of next week,” Kelly said.

CNN reported on another phenomenon of this weather front:

The cold temperatures have had unusual side effects in some places. In the Kansas City area, residents were saying they smelled an unusual odor, which meteorologists traced to a farm in Albert Lea, Minnesota, CNN affiliate KMBC reported.

The National Weather Service in Kansas City tweeted out a map and blamed the bad smell on a culprit more than 300 miles north.

The odor of manure from a large stock farm was trapped in a part of the atmosphere that moved southward with the cold front as it passed over Kansas City, meteorologists said.

Follow Penny Starr on Twitter