A historic cold has settled in the southern United States, although a significant climate change is expected shortly. This morning brought record low temperatures that even reached the state of Florida.
Simultaneously, a brief incursion of Arctic air over the eastern part of the country is causing wind-driven snow accumulation in the eastern region of the Great Lakes.
More than 24 cities, including southern locations like Fort Myers and Naples in Florida, recorded new daily records for low temperatures (or matched existing ones) for November 11th.
Jacksonville (Florida) and Savannah (Georgia) experienced their coldest morning recorded so early in the fall season since 1976, both marking a chilly -2 °C. Miami also felt the cold and was close to breaking its own minimum record, being just one degree off with a temperature of 9 °C.
Historic cold, a particular phenomenon in Florida
These low temperatures are causing a particular phenomenon in southern Florida: iguanas, being cold-blooded, lose muscle control and enter a state of paralysis, appearing “frozen.” As a result, they may fall from trees, a fact that some Florida residents observed on Tuesday morning. Authorities clarify that the reptiles are not dead, but immobilized, and can recover if the heat returns quickly enough.
Further north, the historic cold has triggered the first snow event by “lake effect” of the season in the Great Lakes region. This snow is expected to significantly complicate travel conditions on Tuesday in the affected areas, specifically northeastern Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania, and western New York state.
In the western Great Lakes area, the strongest part of the snowfall has already concluded. Accumulations of up to 300 mm were reported in areas located more than 80 kilometers south of Chicago. North of the city, figures exceeded 250 mm, covering from the northeastern tip of Illinois to southeastern Wisconsin.
The National Weather Service reported that the combination of snow and strong winds created dangerous travel conditions during Monday morning, particularly on Interstate 57 south of Chicago, affecting the counties of Kankakee and northern Iroquois, in Illinois.
The city of Chicago itself only received between 25 and 75 mm of snow, although it was accompanied by thunder and intense winds between Sunday night and early Monday morning. Sunday’s forecasts had suggested the possibility of historic accumulations for November, exceeding 250 mm, but the strongest snow bands ultimately did not directly impact the urban center.
Lake-effect snow accumulations tend to vary drastically over short distances, as they depend on the exact location of the snow bands, which are usually very narrow. This is precisely what happened on Monday near Lake Michigan.
Other affected areas include the upper peninsula of Michigan and northwestern Indiana, where snowfall exceeded 300 mm between Sunday and Monday.
In the Appalachian region, several centimeters of snow have also been recorded since Monday, in a strip that extends from West Virginia to the border between North Carolina and Tennessee. The National Weather Service highlighted that Knoxville, Tennessee, experienced its earliest accumulated snowfall since 1996 on Monday. Snowflakes reached as far south as the Atlanta metropolitan area on Monday and even reached the North Carolina coast, in Wilmington, on Tuesday morning.
Fortunately, this wave of historic cold will be short-lived. A rapid recovery of temperatures is expected in the central and southern United States during the second half of the week. This will occur as the mass of Arctic air weakens and warm winds from the south return. By Friday and Saturday, high temperatures will be between 10 and 25 degrees above average values for the time, in a vast area from the Plains to the Midwest.
Several cities in the Midwest, which have just received their first snowfalls of the season, could experience a drastic change and approach daily high temperature records on Saturday. Among them are Dubuque (Iowa) and Rockford (Illinois), where thermometers are forecast to reach 21 °C at the start of the weekend.
Certain areas in the south will also see the return of weather warm enough to wear light clothing, like “shorts and a t-shirt,” in the coming days.
By Friday, Nashville (Tennessee) expects the return of high temperatures close to 21 °C, a value that is about 10 degrees above the usual average. In much of the Florida peninsula, thermometers will mark between 25 and 27 °C as the weekend approaches.
However, this notable thermal increase will not be felt across the entire east coast. Forecasts indicate that the historic cold in most of the northeast of the country will remain persistently below average values until the week ends.
