Arctic blast has arrived in the eastern US…numerous record low temperatures by early Wednesday

/ November 12, 2019

Guest post by Paul Dorian,

Numerous record low temperatures were set this morning for the day and, in some cases, the all-time low temperature for November was recorded; map courtesy coolwx.com, NOAA

Numerous record low temperatures were set this morning for the day and, in some cases, the all-time low temperature for November was recorded; map courtesy coolwx.com, NOAA

*Arctic blast has arrived in the eastern US…numerous record low temperatures by early Wednesday*

Overview

The strong cold front representing the leading edge of a widespread Arctic air mass passed through the DC-to-Philly-to-NYC corridor early this morning and temperatures have fallen into the 30’s from early day highs.  Precipitation is being enhanced in the cold air behind the front as a strong jet streak aloft generates upward motion in the I-95 corridor.  As a result, a changeover to snow is likely during the mid-day and early afternoon hours in the immediate DC-to-Philly-to-NYC corridor and this changeover to snow is likely all the way to coastal New Jersey and Delmarva.  Some spots could receive small snow accumulations and as temperatures drop to near freezing later in the day, watch for the possibility of “black ice” on some roadways.  Precipitation winds down later today and the cold will become the main story with record low temperatures in numerous Mid-Atlantic/NE US locations by early tomorrow. Widespread records were set earlier today from Texas to the Great Lakes with some stations recording their lowest temperature ever for the month of November and we are not even at the halfway point.

An upper-level jet streak is helping to prolong the precipitation in the I-95 corridor as it helps to generate strong upward motion in the atmosphere; map courtesy NOAA, tropicaltidbits.com

An upper-level jet streak is helping to prolong the precipitation in the I-95 corridor as it helps to generate strong upward motion in the atmosphere; map courtesy NOAA, tropicaltidbits.com

Details

Often times the passage of a frontal system signals the end of the precipitation, but that is not the case today as an upper-level jet streak is enhancing upward motion and helping to generate some post-frontal precipitation in the I-95 corridor.  As temperatures continue to drop, the rain is changing over to snow in many locations and this changeover threat will extend all the way to the east coast over the next couple of hours.  Small snow accumulations are possible and there is the possibility of some “black ice” to form on the roadways later today as temperatures slide towards the freezing mark.

There is some post-frontal “jet-streak induced” precipitation (arrow) and this raises the chances for a changeover to snow from the immediate I-95 corridor all the way to the coastline; map courtesy NOAA

There is some post-frontal “jet-streak induced” precipitation (arrow) and this raises the chances for a changeover to snow from the immediate I-95 corridor all the way to the coastline; map courtesy NOA

A widespread region of the country experienced daily record or near record lows this morning and, in some cases, the lowest temperature ever recorded for the month of November took place which is particularly impressive since we haven’t even reached the mid-way point of the month.  This area of record or near record lows will shift to the Mid-Atlantic/NE US by early tomorrow morning as many low temperature records are well within reach.  For example, at Philly Int’l Airport (PHL), the record low for November 13th (Wednesday) is 24 degrees and this is certainly within reach and many suburban locations along the I-95 corridor will drop to the teens in the overnight hours.  In addition to the potential for overnight low temperature records, high temperatures on Wednesday will be confined to the low-to-mid 30’s along the I-95 corridor and these may turn out to be the “lowest” high temperatures ever recorded for the date of November 13th.

This is one of the coldest starts to the month of November across the nation since the middle 1990’s. Map courtesy Weather Bell Analytics, NOAA

This is one of the coldest starts to the month of November across the nation since the middle 1990’s. Map courtesy Weather Bell Analytics, NOAA

Some of the very impressive weather observations from this morning include monthly temperature records at Clinton, Oklahoma (12 degrees), Altus AFB, Oklahoma (13 degrees), Mt. Vernon, Illinois (10 degrees), and Fort Worth, Texas (20 degrees).  This is especially impressive given the fact that we haven’t even reached mid-month and most monthly records are set near the end of the given month. In addition, the daily record set this morning at Indianapolis, Indiana of 8 degrees shatters the prior record set 108 years ago and Chicago, Illinois dropped to a record of 7 degrees – both of these are the lowest temperatures ever for so early in the season. In Detroit, Michigan, the Arctic blast resulted in nearly 10 inches of snow…the most ever there for the month of November. Finally, and not to be outdone, it dropped all the way down to 7 degrees in Amarillo, Texas earlier today.

Meteorologist Paul Dorian
Perspecta, Inc.
perspectaweather.com

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144 thoughts on “Arctic blast has arrived in the eastern US…numerous record low temperatures by early Wednesday”

  2. One of my alarmist relatives explained it to me this way. Because global warming is heating up and melting the arctic twice as fast as the USA, the cold air has no where to go so it slides south. She did not take me laughing at her well.

      • I thought the claim was…”everywhere is warming twice as fast as everywhere else!” which is quite funny when you think about it.

        • “Nobody goes the anymore. It’s too crowded.” (face palm) but it was Yogi Berra.

          “I want everyone in America to have an above average income.”
          Spoken by Jimmy Carter, a “nuclear engineer” from Annapolis. I guess the Navy doesn’t teach basic math to its “nuclear engineers”.

    • At least she had some kind of explanation. Down in Oz we are having lots of fires and if you don’t agree with the GREENS that Climate Change is causing them, you are an arsonist. Simple!

      • Still some scope for further denigration then Mike, they haven’t adopted, climate denier arsonist yet….

      • Mike

        At least your deputy PM has ripped into the pseudo suburban greens. More than anyone has done in the UK.

    • Very funny, but also very telling story.

      Weather is complicated on all levels, but making it political witchcraft, has created the impression that mouth-to-mouth and political statements are correct and that everybody have the technical and logic skills to know how it works.

      It is a bit the same as when modern witch doctors succeed in convincing non skeptics why witch doctor’s cure is better than the traditional doctor’s solution. – Back to nature or something.

      By no means is this a general sign of low IQ. We are just all so wonderful different.

    • In the world of the two heading coin this is normal practice .
      hence, why they can never answer what would disprove ‘climate doom’

  3. You can bet that we will be told by the global warming alarmists sometime in December that this November is the warmest on record globally. And the number of deaths from the record cold in the US will never, EVER, be publicized by the mainstream media. That is just information we don’t need to have.

      • I’ve observed an arctic blast discrepancy on the weather channel here in the mid-south US where so far we’re about 6F below the November average temp. Yesterday early, my weather channel app said 21F. Today, the weather channel monthly history shows yesterday’s low at 28F. Watts up with that! I checked weather underground and the low was 21F. The temp was actually below 28F for over 10 hrs. Who can I contact to note this discrepancy in the reported minimum temperature?

        • The issue is where WC gets its temperature data from. In areas that don’t have a NWS temperature station in the general area they use locals with acceptable weather stations (Vantage Pro II and the like) properly cited on their property. For instance the daily temperature for my unincorporated town comes from a local rancher that has a Vantage Pro II on his range. His ranch is about 6 miles west of the actual town. The backup site for the weather data is about 4 south of the primary site. I have a Vantage Pro II on my ranch but never invested in the software to pass the data on. My site is about 4 miles north of the town. Both the primary site and my site sit at 6000 ft altitudes. The difference is that the primary site in in a valley area and mine is at the top of the hills to the north. There almost always is a discrepancy between the reported data from the primary site and my site. It is caused by the topographical differences in our two stations.

          IMO reporting the discrepancy will not result in any meaningful change.

          • chemman,

            Thanks for detail but my location is more urban/metropolitan and within 20 miles of an international airport. WC = weather channel monthly history, WU = weather underground station near me.

            Nov-11:
            WC = 62F high, 28F low
            WU = 63.5F high, 21.7F low

            I can corroborate the reported WU low temp from several sources but the WC reports it as 28F, which is also the high for the next day Nov-12.

  5. We had snow for several hours in Urbanna, Virginia today.
    Forecasting rain but no snow. I’ll bet the meteorologist will be glad when the weather complies with their models.

    • It’s hard to determine if forecasters care. I got this from engineer-brother yesterday–

      “A real confidence booster for weather and climate forecasting:

      Fort St. John BC

      Temperature at 4:00 pm… -16.7 C

      Forecast low… -14 C
      Forecast issued… 4:00 pm

      Temperature at 5:00 pm… -18.3 C

      https://weather.gc.ca/past_conditions/index_e.html?station=yxj”

      Apparently if you have a supercomputer, you don’t need or use a window or thermometer.

      • On the Environment Canada weather forecasts, I often see a currently reported temperature that exceeds a very recently forecast extreme. Given that Environment Canada seems to revise its forecasts every 15 min or so, it seems likely that somebody in the organization must notice that a forecast is often already wrong at the moment it is released. It is refreshing that they don’t try to hide the inadequacy of their models by automatically revising the projections to at least match the temperature at the moment the projection is released. Heaven only knows the dark place where the myriad forecast revisions are filed away and so it is unlikely that anybody would ever raise a stink over forecasts that were actually hindcasts. But much like climatologists, EC stands by its models, reality be damned. Pig headedness that is a wonder to behold.

  7. I wonder if we’ll see Joe Bastardi’s “bathtub slosh” effect, where the southerly meanderings of jet undulate back and forth between hemispheres.
    Keep in mind that the anomalously high temps are still well below freezing for a large part of the map above.

  9. Well, so much for grandchildren never seeing snow… They will be digging their way through it.

    Another COMPLETE FAILURE brought to you by…the Global Warming Religion.

  10. Another early winter onset…. and century old low temp records falling. Hmmmm.
    It’s making the myth of ‘Global Warming’ difficult for even the gullible to believe.

    • Now come along JMac, you know the rules. Record cold temperatures are simply weather events. Record high temperatures are evidence of climate change.

      • Rod,
        I’m a realist engineer and this is the fundamental rule for realist engineers, aka scientists: If the allegations don’t fit the evidence in hand, the null hypothesis holds (natural climate change) and the hyperventilated AGW hypothesis is rejected.

        Put simply, repeatedly yelling “Boogie Man!” is neither a convincing argument nor reality. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to put another log in the wood stove.

  11. It is a combination of pressure change and convection that has a far greater effect on surface temperatures than LWIR absorption band radiation. How was a slight change in CO2 affect the speed of movement and temperature change observed in a passing cold front?

    • See, what happens.. 🙂 ….is that the See-OH!-Too causes the air to heat up and the pressure builds up just like after eating too many beans when the gas in your gut needs to find room – (until you make it an open system) – and this builds up and causes bulges in the jet stream. Get it?

  12. Six weeks from official winter and upstate New York on NAMS falls to -19 C, -2 F in the morning, northern Florida to -3 C, or 26 F, and Houston to -1C, or 30 F.

    Kinda like the 1970s really.

        • Jeff
          When I lived in Vermont in the late-60s, the locals joked that Summer came on July 4th — and left on July 5th. The first year I was there, the last snow of Winter came on May 1st. The first snow came in mid-October during deer hunting season.

        • Living in Northern Minnesota in my childhood and adult life in North Dakota I have driven on snow and ice from late September to late April, Since I moved to Arizona full time in 2007 I missed the ice cover roads in early May.

  13. Well, too far South to get dangerously cold weather, but Atlanta is forecasted to tie the 21 degree F record for the coldest Nov. 13th originally set in 1894.

    Hate to imagine how cold the country would be without global warming. It may be ‘weather’, but the theory unequivocally holds that increased atmospheric CO2 must warm the air, and the effect is global. So this entire cold airmass must be warmer that it would have been without the CO2, right?

  14. Average high

    7.8°C

    Average low

    0.0°C

    Highest temperature (1937-2012)

    19.7°C2012

    Lowest temperature (1937-2012)

    -7.8°C1937

    Greatest precipitation (1937-2012)

    32.4 mm1992

    Greatest rainfall (1937-2012)

    32.4 mm1992

    Greatest snowfall (1937-2012)

    4.6 cm1943

    Most snow on the ground (1955-2012)

    3.0 cm1983

    Currently -9 in Euros.

  15. Does the urban heat island effect mean that such apparent low temperatures are actually even lower?

    • Certainly, depends on windspeed (winds reduce UHIE), but often 4 – 8 deg F or more for large cities compared to rural.

  18. Does anybody have any facts on the sail boat greta is using to get to spain? The owner of the boat, the specs, how many people to run the boat, who is paying for it?

    Also, has anybody found out how rich vile greta and her parents have become since she became only person who can save the world?? After all, she has quit school, so getting a job is going to be hard, how will she eat, or buy seeds when she has to plant her own food?

    • No, just that these people are only able to do this in the first place thanks technology that ‘evil fossil fuels’ she so strongly rejects , enables. Now how is that for irony.

    • Professional lifestyle bloggers. You know, the kind that travel around the world posting pictures of themselves in exotic places, with plenty of pictures of his attractive wife in a bikini. Obviously looking for fame. They’re bringing a professional sailor along.

  19. numerous record low temperatures
    Wait long enough and you will find through ‘adjustments ‘ this will not be the case .

  20. It’s also well below average temps in the UK Scotland is very cold for the time of year,snow in the Welsh and Scottish mountains,Spain is having a lot of snow.

    • B d Clark

      Spain is under strong Atlantic influence, we were there in October and we had a lot more strong wind from the west than usual. We were at the Mediterranean, but thought we would be in northern Portugal on the Atlantic coast.

      Some people think this is due to the increasing influence of harsh perturbations in the Northwestern Atlantic. Too harsh to be explained with the usual ‘AMO soon goes down’ blah blah.

  21. Perhaps St. Greta is not Pippi Longstocking at all; maybe she is the young woman who will grow up to be the White Witch in C.S.Lewis’s wonderful book “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” If I remember correctly the White Witch is causing Narnia to freeze and she turns living creatures to stone. Perhaps she does so by saying vehemently, “How dare you!” I think I might be on to something here!
    Good luck to the East U.S. as winter descends; perhaps the White Witch will get stuck in the Doldrums for a few weeks and you will thaw out. But she is young and her powers are growing. By her next visit to the U.S. she may be able to see heretical “denier” thoughts, just as she now sees CO2. Then all you heretics will get your comeuppance; turned to stone in a frozen land!
    We have our lion, although he roars more than he should and they’re pretending to impeach him. Now if we can just find four English schoolchildren to save us from the evil!

  23. With less than 200 years of somewhat reliable temperature records in some parts of the world, high and low temp records will occur quite regularly. When we have 10000 years worth of widespread data, record temps will occur less frequently and have more gravity. Insinuating any meaning to extremes in the current dataset is unscientific to say the least. BTW, What is a “jet streak”?

  24. Down here in the deep south, water that leaked through my Jeep’s soft top yesterday is frozen on the floor in the WeatherTech floor mats this AM.

  27. A short story about my one interaction with the National Weather Service:

    Years ago, late October, we were sailing west in the Atlantic heading back to our marina near Rock Hall, MD. The wind was 35 – 40 knots NNW, seas 6 -8 ft, temperature in the low 40s with light rain. We were under reduced sail doing 6+ knots. The boat was handling it beautifully. Even in those conditions it was fun.

    Then we came to the Delaware Bay and turned north. The tide was against us, with a 3 foot chop, close hauled we were going nowhere. With the motor at 80% throttle we were managing about 2 knots. My wife was at the helm and I was taking constant sightings (this was before good GPS) to navigate through the numerous shoals. In short, we were getting our butts kicked.

    Then we hear on channel 16, “This is the National Weather Service, Lewes, Delaware. Can anyone tell us what the weather is like out on the bay?” I thought it better to not reply.

    • Good thing Earl Hackett didn’t have Greta aboard, who would have turned off the motor (How dare you!), and Earl and his wife would have drifted south for hours waiting for the tide to turn…

    • Back in the 1980s I worked at an observatory in the Andes pre cordillera. The weather forecast consisted of two telexes, one from Santiago 500 km south, the other from Antofagasta similarly distant to the north. Then we interpolated (!). During the 1982/83 El Nino the weather in the whole of Chili was so bad that one day we got the message on the telex: ‘hoy no tiempo por causa del tiempo’, there is no weather forcast today because of the weather.

  29. We are facing a severe winter in the northern hemisphere. This year, unlike in previous years, the Barents Sea freezes very quickly.

  30. You need to get over to Venice, they have the highest water level since 1966 and it’s apparently because of climate change and at he same time that Venice is sinking.

  31. Yesterday, on one US major national network TV show (begins with N and ends with C) there was a segment about 5 minutes long discussing the chance that up to 100 records for cold temperatures could be set between today and tomorrow for the cold spell hitting the Mississippi valley region up to Northeastern states. But there was not one mention of “climate change” at any point in said segment.

    In contrast, a few cities set a few record hot temperatures for a few particular days of last summer, and the MSM was overflowing with reports that this was clear evidence of “climate change”.

    . . . something about hidden agenda therein.

    • Al

      “The current situation is compatible with the Wolf Minimum.”

      Certainly it isn’t. As far as I recall, a Wolf Minimum is a global event.

      What North America has been experiencing for some years is very local, and has imho more to do with distorted tropospheric polar vortexes over that (small) part of the Earth than with the Sun.

      Some think the tropopause is leaky above that place, and lets more and more cold streams pass down to the lower troposphere and from there to the surface.

      Wait and see.

  35. For my little spot on the globe, the 12th and the 13th of November did actually set new record lows for those dates.
    Both of the previous record lows were set in 1911.
    Now both new low records have been set in 2019, at the height of Global Warming.
    (Tiljander?)

    • This morning (the 14th) I tuned into the The Storm Channel (on mute) before going to work.
      The seemed ecstatic that the could finally report on a large number of new records (I’m sure they would have preferred new record highs to new record lows).
      They flashed up a bunch of old records and the years they set but now broken.
      1911 showed up quite a bit. Even for old record lows in the deep South.

      My take away?
      This cold wave in November has happened before.
      It is NOT a sign of “Climate Change”.

  36. Concord NH set a record for lowest high temperature for the date. Winds overnight prevented radiational cooling from breaking the low temperature record. (OTOH, that was some pretty impressive cold air advection.) Clouds are expected tonight, so we likely won’t break a low temperature record. Other places in NH with shorter records broke low temp records though.

    Old: 30°F in 1894 (data goes back to 1868)
    New: 25°F. Breaking a 125 year old record by five degrees is stunning!

    Is there anything global warming cannot do?

    • Ric Werme

      Are you serious? You are talking about a record break at -3 °C as if that had been -30!

      What about these below?

      -USS0010D24S MT_Placer_Basin_______________ 2014 11 12 -38.2
      -USS0010D24S MT_Placer_Basin_______________ 2014 11 11 -36.9
      -USC00488884 WY_THERMOPOLIS_9NE____________ 2014 11 14 -36.7

      • Wyoming and Montana are hundreds of miles away from the nearest ocean, and have multiple mountain ranges between them and the Pacific.

        Concord is less than 100 km to the Atlantic, and is about 100 meters above sea level.

        Your data seems to be the all-time coldest, that’s not what impresses me. Were all those records broken this week, and by how much? We very rarely see 125 year-old records set by nearly 3°C

        I think you’re comparing apples with hockey pucks.

  37. The Atlantic front shows that the jet stream is moving far south. That is why it is snowing in Spain and France. High pressure over Scandinavia.

  39. 16F (-9C) overnight lows here in US mid-Appalachians several times this past week (and attendant show-showers). A bit unusual, not not that much — there was a fairly big snowstorm this time last year. Doesn’t mean I like it……

  40. North America and Scandinavia are the two places where glacial growth nucleated the massive NH glaciation of the last glacial maximum. About 20-25,000 years ago. So exceptional cold and ice in those places now is of special interest.

  41. The solar minimum starts to stretch out its fangs. And that’s just the beginning. Vienna is pretty cold as well. Next year the Minimum will develop its effect for the first time and from there it will get worse every year. A new mini ice age looms and we will freeze. Many will wish that the Alarmists would have been right. Let’s see how long it takes for people to go to the streets when they find out that their energy security is bye-bye.

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