More than half of the US will feel the chill for the final day of winter on Monday as cold air plunges into the country from Canada after springlike temperatures had millions across the country getting a little taste of the warmer weather to come this spring.
Spring officially arrives on Tuesday, but it won’t feel like that for more than 23 million people across the Southeast who are currently under Freeze Watches and Freeze Warnings that stretch from Arkansas to North Carolina.
These alerts include cities such as Little Rock in Arkansas, Memphis in Tennessee, Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama, Atlanta in Georgia and Charlotte in North Carolina.
In addition to the cold air, heavy snow, including lake-effect snow, could slow travel from the Great Lakes to the Northeast and portions of the central Appalachians for the first half of the new workweek.
This latest round of late-season winter weather comes as a potent low-pressure system moves across Canada, which will aid in the development of lake-effect snow and dangerous snow squalls across the Great Lakes region through the first half of the week.
The cold air pushing across the region and moving over the relatively warm Great Lakes will help aid in the development of heavy lake-effect snow for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and the Tug Hill Plateau in central New York, which could see several inches of snow by the time the winter weather moves out of the region.
NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC) said snowfall chances will also extend to the upslope portions of the central Appalachians on Monday and Tuesday.
A cold front will also push south and across the Southeast by Monday, which will usher in much colder air in its wake.
So, how cold will it get in the Southeast? Very cold.
Forecast low temperatures will dip into the 20s and 30s from the Midwest to the Tennessee Valley on Monday and then into the mid-South and Southeast by Tuesday.
“Vegetation in these regions is susceptible to frost/freeze damage given the relatively mild late winter temperatures, thus any unprotected sensitive plants could be damaged or killed,” the WPC warned.
The Northeast won’t escape the late-season chill either.
Forecast low temperatures will also drop into the 20s and 30s for the first half of the week, with cities like Pittsburgh, Syracuse in New York and Burlington in Vermont dropping below freezing through Wednesday.
Warmer air will slowly return to the U.S. as spring gets underway, but not before 180 million people feel the late-season winter chill on Monday.
More than 150 million will still feel the chill on Tuesday, and nearly 90 million will remain below average on Wednesday.
