The upcoming Big Freeze (1-18 to 1-22)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There is a super-frigid front on the way for the Lower 48 east of the Rockies which will arrive for the Great Plains states this Saturday and will continue in the usual southeastern direction for most of the following week.

Selected cities for your convenience:

Denver: Saturday 17/-3 Sunday 17/-2 Monday 6/-2

Minneapolis: Sunday -3/-14 Monday -6/-15

Chicago: Sunday 11/-5 Monday 4/-6

Kansas City: Sunday 17/-1 Monday 13/2

St. Louis: Sunday 20/6 Monday 18/6

Detroit: Monday 9/-2 Tuesday 6/-3

Cleveland: Monday 9/-2 Tuesday 5/-3

Note these forecasts are typically heavily regressed back to the seasonal means but will be “corrected” as a given date comes closer: in just the last 24 hours the forecast for Cleveland for example has dropped 5 degrees on both ends.

Cincinnati: Monday 12/0 Tuesday 14/2

Pittsburgh: Monday 12/-2 Tuesday 8/-4

Buffalo: Sunday 20/8 Monday 13/3 Tuesday 9/3 [Sunday added for the football game there]

Albany: Monday 19/6 Tuesday 16/2

NYC: Tuesday 20/9 Wednesday 24/18

DC: Monday 24/8 Tuesday 19/6

Dallas: Sunday 36/21 Monday 35/21

Atlanta: Monday 35/22 Tuesday 34/24

New Orleans: Tuesday 35/22 Wednesday 43/39

Jacksonville: Tuesday 45/38 Wednesday 46/39

For me the power infrastructure here is rather brittle: in addition to the 4 day blackout this past summer, I’ve had a couple more 1-5 hour blackouts during 2 previous cold snaps, one a few days ago.

Obviously this will affect 2 football games this weekend-they won’t be the coldest ever, but it won’t exactly be pleasant.

2

I live north of Pittsburgh and next week looks like a frigid atrocity.

One of the nights is speculating -9.

Dear gawds - cold as a polar bear’s toenails indeed.

3

RIP my electric bill (I have very nice floor-to-ceiling windows but they are of no use when the weather gets this cold).

4

Well let me break the news to the dog.

5

We’re in Minneapolis, but won’t be venturing out on Sunday. At least we’re not up on the Iron Range, where it’s supposed to drop to -14/-23 in Grand Rapids on Monday.

6

I’m in South Florida, and we tend not to be invited to these.
In this case, I’m flying to Las Vegas, and it’s going to be pretty cold. I fly back on the redeye Sunday night.

Looks like I’ll be flying around/over the storm. It’s a non-stop on Jetblue, so hopefully I won’t be caught up in any additional delays due to other traffic.

7

Eh, as a lifelong Michigan resident, I just call it ‘winter’ :smirk:

Seriously though, lows below zero F and highs that struggle to get in the single digits are never fun. Hope everybody in the affected areas stays warm and safe.

8

There’s actually THREE fronts. Saturday’s nationwide map:

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/medr/nav_conus_pmsl.php?fday=3&fcolor=ter

Man, look at all those isobars (means wind out the devil’s wazoo = super nasty wind chills).

9

My phone says 22 Sunday.
10/1 Monday.
7/0 Tues, and 18 Wednesday.

10

We’re going North this weekend & I’m signed up for a snowshoe race on Sun morn. Current forecast has temps barely into double digits. It’s one thing to be out walking in that but to run it it is a whole 'nother thing. It just hurts your lungs to breathe in that much cold air. Add in (subtract out?) wind chills & it’s gonna be painful (I can’t have anything over my mouth when I’m running; too hard to get enough O2 in to the lungs.)

11

Gosh, I hope this doesn’t affect the inauguration. :smiling_imp:

I do hope that those doing their jobs that have to stand around for hours don’t have too bad of a time of it.

12

Wouldn’t that make hot winds?

13

This is true. We used to get them here several times each winter, though.

[goes out to split some more firewood]

14

Depends on which version of the devil you subscribe to.

15

Well, yeah: I always get annoyed with people who say stuff like “when hell freezes over”-if you have read your Dante, half of hell is frozen.

16

In Buffalo on Sunday night the game will kick off more than an hour after sundown, with temps slowly dropping from 20F to 15F as the game goes on.

That’s nothing compared to the College Football Final the next day in Indiana, with a kickoff 2 hours after sundown, with temps by the end of the game flirting with the zero mark. Wonder if this will spark them having the game in future years in some neutral warm-weather site like the SB is…

17

Well, like I say, it depends what version you subscribe to. Since hell is fictional, it can be anything anybody wants it to be. If you like your hell hella hot, there’s the old traditional biblical ‘Lake of Fire’ (also my favorite Nirvana cover song from the Unplugged album)…

18

Colder than usual, but not freakishly so. We usually see temperatures like this several times a year in a normal winter.

NYC’s temps would be a once-a-winter thing most winters, and something like Cincinnati is a once-a-decade cold snap. In fact, that’s not too far off from the 2021 temps that caused all the electrical chaos here.

But highs in the mid-30s and lows in the 20s? Not a big deal here in Dallas.

19

The CFP National Championship game will be played in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which is located in Atlanta. This is an indoor stadium, as is Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

20

I was looking very carefully at the game information on ESPN when I wrote that, and it insisted the game was in South Bend. ???