Already tired of old man winter?
The good news is that a big warm up is on the way (at least compared to temperatures over the past few days). The bad news is that meteorological winter does not even begin for another month!
The Midwest and much of the northern tier of the United States has been gripped with unseasonably cold weather. It feels more like early January than mid-November.
The cold air that has been pushed into the Midwest in the past week was caused by a massive typhoon that hit Alaska.
Super Typhoon Nuri moved into the Bering Sea, slamming into Alaska’s Aleutian Islands with winds of over 100 MPH and producing waves as large as 45 feet.
Nuri was recorded as the strongest storm ever on record in the Bering Sea. The pressure recorded in the Bering Sea for Nuri is actually lower than Hurricane Sandy, the super storm that hit New York City and other parts of the east coast of the United States in 2012.
The storm caused what meteorologists are terming a “bomb cyclone“, shifting the jet stream southward and sending much of the United States into a deep freeze.
The cold air rushing over a still relatively warm Lake Michigan caused a historic amount of lake effect snowfall in South Bend. Far northern parts of the city saw over a foot of snow on Thursday. Much of the rest of the city saw 3 to 6 inches, but combined with an unprepared response from the street department, it was enough to cause traffic turmoil.
The worst of the cold weather will be Tuesday night into Wednesday morning with temperatures plummeting into the low to mid teens. Highs will barely crack freezing over the next three days.
However, temperatures will rebound nicely this weekend.
The thaw begins on Saturday with highs in the low to mid 40s. Any remaining snow should be melted in time for Sunday’s highs which could top 50. Temperatures will recede back into the low 40s for Monday and into the 30s the rest of next week. But at least we will get a reprieve from these frigid temperatures for a little while.
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