Arctic hounds to be unleashed on the Lower 48

It’s midwinter and we’re in a bit of a lull of extreme weather as patterns reload in various locations. The big weather news at the moment is a new blast of frigid air soon headed southward through the contiguous United States. It will be the most impressive cold — compared to normal — across the entire globe as it descends this weekend into early next week.

Weather Watch

Arctic sending its best. Many locations will feel the coldest weather of the season during a January 17-24 Arctic outbreak, according to the Weather Prediction Center. It enters the northern Plains on Friday and reaches the East Coast on Sunday. In addition to widespread subzero readings for the northern half of the Lower 48, and freezes to the Gulf Coast of South Texas, potentially dangerous wind chills will cover most of the eastern two-thirds of the nation outside the Deep South and Florida.

Caribbean warmth: can’t stop, won’t stop. It’s feeling like summer in the tropical Caribbean Sea region, again. January records were set Wednesday in the Dominican Republic (92 degrees) and Honduras (100 degrees). San Juan, Puerto Rico, tied its warmest January low with 78 degrees several days ago and broke two more daily records since, including Wednesday with a low of 77 degrees. During 2024, 144 record daily warm lows were set there. Ben Noll and I did a deep dive on the peculiar happenings in the region earlier this month.

Fire weather temporarily wanes. It’s been an exhausting run for firefighters, residents and forecasters dealing with unusually significant January fire weather in southern California. While the largest blazes — Palisades and Eaton — remain only partially contained, and thousands are still evacuated, fire risk is much lower than it has been as winds wane. Unfortunately, more critical fire risk appears to be ahead next week as strong offshore gusts return.

Low T Thursday

With climatological winter (Dec.-Feb.) halfway done, we can take a meaningful look at low temperatures season-to-date across the Lower 48 region.

According to data from the Applied Climate Information System, three states have reported temperatures as low as the minus-30s through January 15. North Dakota, Colorado and Minnesota lead the pack with minus-33s. Two of these lows occurred Tuesday.

Another eight states have had temperatures dip into the minus-20s and 14 have reached the minus-teens.

The furthest south below-zero reading is in southwest North Carolina. Across the west, it’s in northern Arizona.

13 states plus D.C. have witnessed low temperatures above zero.

Lightning Link

Donald Trump will likely face the coldest inauguration since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural was moved indoors due to a deep freeze in 1985. The current forecast is low 20s and a wind chill around 10 for the swearing in.

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As a forecaster, journalist and certified weather freak (there's a badge, trust me), a big part of my job is analyzing the playing field of global weather and related climate change stories to decide which ones to spend more time on.

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