Record-breaking waves of freezing winds, ice, and snow are coming to swaths of the central, eastern, and southern states next week, with meteorologists warning that “more than 250 million” people will be impacted.
Several rounds of Arctic air are heading to states as far west as North Dakota and Texas and will reach all the way up to New York and down to Florida, projections for the first full week of January from Accuweather show:
“The magnitude and extent of the Arctic air will build into the first full week of January and linger through the middle of the month and will, at times, affect more than 250 million people living in more than 40 states in the Central and Eastern regions,” the outlet reported.
“At this time, it looks like there will be at least three major blasts of Arctic air that will affect the Southern states,” meteorologist Alex DaSilva said. “The first outbreak will linger into Jan. 4, the second on Jan. 7-8 and then the third round on Jan. 11-12.”
More blasts of Arctic air “may follow,” but are projected to hit the Midwest and Northeast more, Accuweather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowsk noted.
According to the resource’s lead long-range expert, Paul Pastelok, “This could end up being the coldest January since 2011 for the U.S. as a whole.”
A staggering 1,500-mile-long winter storm system is set to blanket massive portions of the midwest to Virginia in snow and ice:
The National Weather Service (NWS) has predicted that the swaths of heavy snow from northeastern Kansas into north-central Missouri will exceed 15 inches — making it become the heaviest snowfall in a decade.
“Moderate to locally heavy snow is expected to reach the northern Mid-Atlantic region Sunday night with a wintry mix expanding from the central Appalachians to central/eastern Virginia,” the NWS stated.