The coldest air of the season so far will settle across the United States this weekend, producing a blanket of snow in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Sunday, and bringing below-freezing temperatures with dangerously blustery winds to most of the country.
Facing what was likely to be one of the coldest inaugurations in decades, President-elect Donald J. Trump on Friday said he would move Monday’s swearing-in ceremony indoors.
“The cold air is coming directly from the Arctic and will surge south through Canada and into the U.S. over the weekend and into early next week,” said Alex Lamers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.
Chilly temperatures in January are not unusual, but these conditions are likely to be abnormally cold. The cold will settle across the country slowly, starting in the Upper Midwest on Saturday, plunging temperatures more than 30 to 40 degrees from earlier this week, before moving toward the southern and eastern coasts Sunday.
As the cold air trudges across the country, a storm system off the East Coast could combine to bring a burst of wintry weather Sunday. There is a moderate likelihood of three to six inches of snow falling from Washington D.C. through New York City and up to Boston.
Blustery winds will remove body heat, making you feel even colder if you’re outside. The Rockies, northern Plains and Upper Midwest could see wind chill temperatures drop to 30 to 50 below zero at times Saturday into Tuesday. A chill that cold poses a heightened risk of hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin, forecasters from the Weather Prediction Center warned.
By Monday, just about every state will be experiencing temperatures colder than average for this time of year.
Daytime highs on Monday are likely to be 20 to 40 degrees below average from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians. It will be so cold, Mr. Lamers said, that “if you count the summits of the volcanoes in Hawaii, at least a part of every state should be below freezing Monday morning.” More than 250 million people across the United States are likely to feel freezing conditions at some point in the next week, he said.
It will probably be the coldest air of the season for many areas. In Chicago, the current National Weather Service forecast calls for wind chills of 20 below zero on Monday. (That’s cold, but about normal for the city, where O’Hare International Airport has recorded such a low in 32 of the past 40 winters.)
As of Thursday, it appears the cold will most likely peak on Monday and Monday night in terms of the total area affected and the intensity of the cold over the central and northern United States. Any time an Arctic air mass like this one dips all the way to the Gulf Coast, forecasters like Mr. Lamers watch it closely, because it increases the potential of rare winter precipitation across the South. It was too early to tell for certain, but there is at least some possibility of snow or ice in the South next week.
By next Thursday, the temperatures will still be chilly but are expected to warm up to something closer to normal. Overall through the end of next week, some regions may still experience below-normal temperatures, but it shouldn’t be as frigid as Monday into Tuesday.
A very cold inauguration on Monday
It was 48 degrees Fahrenheit at noon on Jan. 20, 2017, when Mr. Trump was first sworn in as president. This time around, he may take the stage during one of the coldest inaugurations in decades.
Temperatures in Washington, D.C., will begin to plummet on Sunday, and wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour are expected to sweep through the National Mall on Monday. With temperatures already below freezing, the wind will make the open space in front of the U.S. Capitol feel much colder, said Jeremy Geiger, a forecaster from the National Weather Service in Washington, D.C.
The windchill is forecast to reach 5 degrees in the city early Monday morning, a benchmark that the city hits at least once most winters, Mr. Lamers said.
While it’ll be cold, it won’t be the coldest inauguration on record. President Ronald Reagan’s second swearing-in ceremony — on Jan. 21, 1985 — was moved indoors, and the parade was canceled, because of the bitter cold.
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