The coldest temperatures are expected Friday morning for the Upper Midwest and Northern Plains.
“Possibly the coldest temperatures of the season so far, with lows dropping down into the -20s for much of south-central and southeast Montana,” said the National Weather Service (NWS) in Billings, Montana.
Chicago will stay in the teens and single digits for Thursday and Friday, then quickly warm back up above freezing by Saturday afternoon.
This cold air is sets the stage for our potential snowstorm from the South across the eastern seaboard.
Freezing rain and snow potential across the South
By Thursday evening, this freezing Arctic airmass will slip far enough South to release a swath of two to five inches of snow across central Tennessee to eastern Kentucky.
This storm hasn’t even formed yet but the groundwork is being laid for more travel nightmares and it’s already concerning meteorologists in the southern states.
“Right now the forecast is for snow but the concern for our southern counties is if warm air comes in aloft and turns some of this to ice,” Scott Unger, meteorologist at the NWS in Nashville, told CNN.
Most of the precipitation will likely be snow for places from Nashville to the central Appalachians.
