January 14, 2024 Lower 48 in Deep Freeze

Lake effect snowfall piling up & East Coast snowfall threat

Impressive Arctic Blast

It’s everything we have been advertising for the past 7-10 days. The conventional and A.I. powered models all showed a strong Arctic blast with a lobe of the lower-stratospheric / upper-tropospheric polar vortex slowly but surely rotating through the Lower 48. The extreme cold is outperforming forecast guidance from several days ago most likely because of snow cover and underestimating the strength of the cold airmass up in Alberta. I’m particularly impressed with the wind chills into the minus 30s and minus 40s into Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois including Chicago. There is a huge population under this frigid cold dome.

Temperatures at 6 pm ET were colder than -10°F in Iowa and -6°F in Chicago with subzero temperatures bending around Lake Michigan into southern Michigan.

Single digits extend into North Texas and Little Rock. Could be some power supply problems:

Jan. 14, 2024: ERCOT has issued a Conservation Appeal for Monday, Jan. 15, from 6 – 10 a.m. CT. Operating reserves are expected to be low tomorrow morning due to continued freezing temperatures, record-breaking demand, and unseasonably low wind.

The Wind Chills were much worse earlier on Sunday and especially yesterday as cold as -70°F in NE Montana and the Dakotas. Canada remains frozen solid.

Sunday’s High Temperature Anomaly

The high temperatures relative to climatology are solidly 40-degrees normal — which is already pretty chilly for January 14.

Chicago at -6°F with a forecast of -13°F for a low.

The cold icon from the NWS pops up for 3-days in a row. That’s never good.

That icon is from a 1969 open-source image from Manhattan of a woman (hipster) in a mini-skirt trudging through snow.

Dallas, Texas going down to 13°F for a low both Monday and Tuesday morning after dipping to 13°F earlier on Sunday. Popular number.

Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Buffalo Bills [-10.0) 4:30 PM ET on Monday (O/U 38.5)