While a brutal and deadly winter storm appears to have finished dumping snow on much of the Northeastern United States, the eastern two-thirds of the country is not yet done with Arctic temperatures, meteorologists said Saturday.
Temperatures this weekend will be below freezing with chills reaching 20 to 30 degrees below zero across the northern Plains, the National Weather Service said. Cold air was expected to drift into Canada's Midwest, and millions were under wind chill warnings. Meanwhile, heavy rain is expected to hit the West Coast starting Saturday and continuing into early next week.
“Although this Arctic outbreak will not be as cold as the previous one, subzero temperatures will reach as far south as Missouri and Kansas this morning,” the weather service said in a warning early Saturday.
The cold comes after major East Coast cities, including New York and Washington, D.C., and a large swath of the Midwest saw several inches of snow fall over the past week, delaying travel, closing schools and causing dozens of deaths from hypothermia or weather. -Related accidents. Some places saw significant snowfall, including Michigan City, Indiana, where 17 inches of snow fell.
The weather was blamed for at least 55 deaths
A series of storms over the past two weeks have killed at least 55 people across the country, many from hypothermia or accidents caused by weather conditions.
Nineteen people have died in Tennessee, including a 25-year-old man who was found inside a mobile home after a space heater fell over and stopped working, officials said.
“There was ice on the walls,” said Bob Johnson, chief deputy with the Marshall County Sheriff's Office.
Others died in traffic accidents. In Washington County, Tennessee, a patient in an ambulance and a person in a pickup truck were killed in a head-on collision after the truck lost control on a snow-covered road.
Five people died in Kentucky due to the freezing weather, and five others – most of them homeless – died in Washington state, officials said. At least two others died in Louisiana.
Freeze to continue this weekend
Wind chill warnings extended from parts of Montana to northwest Georgia on Saturday morning, with meteorologists warning that sub-zero temperatures could be made even colder by the wind.
The passage of “cold air” over the relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes is also expected to result in more lake snow downwind on the lakes, the weather service said. Snow is also expected on Saturday on slopes from West Virginia to southwestern Pennsylvania.
In Memphis, officials asked residents to boil drinking water starting Friday after cold weather caused several water pipes to break, leading to low water pressure.
New York City's Emergency Management Agency said standing water and slush that could refreeze overnight would pose a risk of patchy ice on the ground Saturday, and it urged commuters to be careful on roads and sidewalks.
“Cold conditions with sub-zero temperatures will continue until Monday,” the agency said.
The next good news: melting weather next week
In what UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain has called a “weather strike,” a significant rise in temperatures is expected across the continental United States next week. Meteorologists say above-average temperatures will extend across the country, with highs in the 60s or 70s in some places in the South.
The National Weather Service said there will be no additional replenishment of Arctic air from Canada, so “persistent warmth” will begin in the middle of the country by Sunday.
Meteorologists said the warmth will also bring a chance of flooding due to rainfall and melting snow. Read more here.
Contributing: Doyle Rice, USA TODAY; Associated Press
