February 13, 2025 Thursday Winter Weather
Potential Record Cold from Polar Vortex Next Week
Good Thursday Evening!
The icon of the next week on most weather dot gov forecast pages for cities in the Midwest, Plains, and Great Lakes will be Cold — an open domain photograph from Manhattan in the 1960s of a woman in a mini-skirt trudging through snow.
The ICON model from Germany is a global system at high resolution and it consistently has the best performing 2-meter temperatures in the near-term. It performed very well for January’s major polar vortex outbreak.
The 5-day forecast has temperature anomaly in the 40-50°F spreading from Canada to Chicago and southward into Texas. In Montana and the Dakotas, beneath 1055 mb high pressure, the temperature anomaly is -75°F with actual temperatures in the minus 50s and wind chills in the minus 70s. We’ll see how this forecast trends in the coming day or two, because it is a little more aggressive than ECMWF and GFS.
I don’t show the Canadian global model has much as I should, but it has a very similar pattern for the Polar Vortex intrusion into Texas. This is valid Wednesday morning with almost -60°F temperature anomaly and coldest actual temperatures of -50°F.
Temperature Analysis 6:00 PM ET
Temperatures pushed 90°F around Orlando this afternoon. Only 5 million at/above 80°F by 6 PM in Florida.
Temperature Anomaly 6:00 PM ET
Lower 48 Temperature anomaly = -9.1°F below normal.
The main story over the next 7-10 days will be the cold temperatures. However, there is the potential for winter weather in southern states — again — and, of course, we’re always watching for blockbuster blizzards.
Friday Morning Low Temperatures
Over 218 million below freezing, and the average Lower 48 low is 21.5°F
High Temperatures on Friday
Still balmy in Florida. 20s in the Great Lakes and New England.
Low Temperatures Next Monday
The bottom drops out in the Northern Plains and Midwest into Chicago — blocked by Lake Michigan.
Average Lower 48 temperature for Monday morning is 18.4°F. This gets colder during the week.
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