By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Bitter cold has moved into our area.
And, it isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
Meteorologist Dan Holiday with The Storm Report says an arctic air mass has taken a dive south out of Canada and settled in over the Midwest.
“It just happened that this arctic air mass got dislodged from Canada. It moved down into the Midwest and eventually sunk further south. A lot of that is due to the jet stream, which plays into the pattern,” Holiday tells St. Joseph Post. “And because of that, we need something to move it out and the problem is there’s nothing to move it back out of where it is now for quite some time.”
Holiday doesn’t expect much snow to come with the bitter cold temperatures. The weather forecast does hold out the possibility of snow on Friday and Saturday. Otherwise, cloudy skies and cold temperatures dominate.
Holiday says the high might not reach the freezing mark until the 19th or 20th.
“But just the long-range outlook shows that it may be around the 21st of February before we see anything above freezing,” according to Holiday. “So, this is going to be a long-duration, very cold event.”
Lows are expected to dip below zero beginning on Thursday night which is forecast at present to have a low of -3 degrees. It could be -5 Friday night with the possibility of the low dipping down to -14 Saturday night.
Holiday says this arctic blast from Canada, which is bringing these bitter cold temperatures, will remain until something pushes it out, probably in about two weeks.
“So, there will be a system that will likely come in and help sort of lift this on up to the north again, I would say by February 21st, 22nd and we will see temperatures back in the low to mid-30s, but even then, they’re still going to be running a little below normal for this time of year.”
These temperatures are well below normal for this time of year as much as 30 to 35 degrees below normal. Holiday says, typically, the high temperature this time of year is around 40 degrees.