An Arctic blast will descend on the tristate area and much of the eastern half of the U.S. overnight, bringing below-freezing temperatures and wind chill plunging those digits into the teens, forecasters said Monday.
“We have a cold front that’s currently moving through the area,” National Weather Service meteorologist Joe Pollina told the Daily News on Monday. “Behind that front we have an arctic air mass that will build into the area, bringing in the colder temperatures.”
“Frigid airmass brings sharply colder weather across the eastern two-thirds of the country and record maximum and minimum temperatures in the Southeast, including all of Florida through tonight,” the NWS predicted. “Snowy, very cold and windy from the Great Lakes to interior New England and the west slopes of the Appalachians.”
For New York City and the surrounding area, this means low temperatures hovering around freezing, Pollina told The News. The mercury was dropping from its mid-50s high throughout Monday, and the NWS issued a freeze warning for the entire Long Island Sound coast of both Connecticut and Long Island. New Jersey was bracing for wind chill temperatures in the teens starting Monday night.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
Visitors to the Brooklyn Bridge brave the cold last December. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
There was a potential for snow showers in New York City from late Monday night into Tuesday, Accuweather.com predicted. While not predicting snow outright, the NWS’s Pollina said there was a slight chance of a flurry or two, depending on how the dual cold snap evolves.
“It’s a good 10 degrees below normal, maybe a little bit more,” Pollina said. Wind gusts of 30-40mph will make temperatures feel 10 degrees colder even than that, he added.
The Midwest already had freezing temperatures and several inches of snow Monday, and meteorologists predicted more snow that would make driving “dangerous to impossible” in northeastern Illinois. North Florida temperatures were expected to nosedive Monday, and nearly all of Georgia was under a freeze warning.
With News Wire Services
