Arctic air to grip the central and eastern US next week

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Paul Pastelok warns of Arctic air gripping the central and eastern United States for next week. Subfreezing temperatures could hit Texas along with a threat of snow and ice.

Transcript

00:00Long-range expert meteorologist Paul Pastelak. And Paul, you've been talking about this cold now,

00:05you know, originally there was a lot of thought that it wouldn't get this cold a few months ago,

00:10and then you started seeing some changes that made you decide, okay, this cold's coming.

00:17Yeah, the change started in the northern Pacific. We saw a lot of activity coming off the Asian

00:22continent. And with all that activity, we felt that there's going to be some problems trying

00:26to warm it up, trying to get that Pacific air mass to come all the way across the country and

00:31warm things up in the east. And now we're seeing the buckling effect of the jet stream really

00:36taking on a charge here over the next 10 days or so. Watch that cold air charge south, Paul,

00:42as we go forward. There it is behind that storm Tuesday into Wednesday. It's not done.

00:47Another surge then as we head toward the end of the weekend. Look at all of that purple. And

00:53I guess to me, Paul, I follow the lines, right? Follow the yellow brick road. And it looks like

00:59those lines are coming right out of the Arctic. They are. They are coming. What a dramatic change

01:04we're going to be looking at, you know, talking about 60s and 70s or highs in Texas. And then by

01:08late next week, next weekend, we're going to be talking about highs in the 40s and 50s,

01:12nighttime lows getting down into the freezing mark. Upper part of Texas could be in the 20s

01:16and teens. So some really good cold air coming straight out of the north. You've got a big high

01:22off the west coast that's going to stay there consistently for the next several days. Some

01:26blocking over eastern Canada and the funnel effect right down the road here into the plain states.

01:32You drew this map for us yesterday, Paul. This is an area where a 10-day stretch,

01:37there's going to be times where temperatures fall below zero.

01:40Yeah, all the way possibly down to Nashville has a chance of getting below zero out of this cold

01:47period that we're looking at, probably just staying north of Atlanta. But again, these

01:51temperatures are going to be on the cold side for several days to come. Waves of cold coming down

01:56straight out of the north and the coldest air from departure sake. You're looking at Iowa,

02:02Illinois, Missouri, down into the Tennessee Valley by the time we get to the middle of January.

02:07Then there's going to be a wailing and gnashing of teeth of many meteorologists, including me,

02:12as we head toward this week. Storm comes across Texas maybe Wednesday to Thursday,

02:16could be some snow and ice with that. And then it's the million dollar question,

02:20does the storm stay weak and get pushed out the sea or does it strengthen and come up the coast?

02:25Well, we were talking about this earlier, Bernie, because of the high structure off the west coast,

02:30so far west, there is some room for this to turn a little bit towards the north direction,

02:35which would bring the Carolinas, mid-Atlantic, even southern New England into the picture by

02:39late next week. We'll have to continue to watch that system as it cuts across the Gulf Coast.

02:44And there's even probably more chances because this pattern doesn't go away down the road as well.

02:50Acuwa, the league long-range expert, meteorologist Paul Pasluck. Again, Paul, thanks for joining us.

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