In 2025, it starts with a cold front and several Arctic air blasts are expected to hit much of the United States in the first half of January. Additionally, a winter storm is forecasted to bring heavy snowfall from the Midwest to the Northeast this weekend.
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National Weather Service
"As we finish the year 2024 and move into 2025, the above-normal warmth in the eastern half of the U.S. will quickly be replaced by a series of outbreaks in the Arctic... and the coldest air of the season will persist until next week," said the National Weather Service (NWS) in X on New Year's Eve.
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The Arctic air will spread from the northern plains to the south and east in the coming days, leading to "exceptionally high chances of below-normal temperatures" in the eastern part of the country until next week.
Arctic sprouts
The NWS also stated that it is possible for temperatures below zero to occur as far south as Florida and the Gulf Coast. The NWS defines arctic outbreaks as "very cold air masses that typically originate in the Siberian region of Asia, cross the North Pole into Canada, and move southward and eastward to the southern United States."
They occur regularly, but reach as far south as the United States only every four or five years; an arctic outbreak in January 2019 was linked to nearly two dozen deaths and thousands of disrupted flights.
The freezing temperatures have already arrived in the northern plains by midweek and are expected to spread south and east until the end of the weekend. Another more extreme Arctic outbreak is forecasted to bring even colder temperatures to the same areas next week.