A strong cold front swept through the Mid-Atlantic on Thursday, bringing an abrupt end to warm, springlike weather that, as recently as the day before, had people wondering if winter was finally over.
But winter was not over yet.
Temperatures in some places plunged as much as 40 to 50 degrees in 24 hours. On Wednesday, Washington, D.C., hit 86 degrees, shattering a same-day record of 79. Even at 5 a.m. Thursday morning, it was 75 degrees.
But by noon, the temperature had dropped to 32 degrees, and snow had begun floating down from the sky.
“It’s pretty wild,” said Dominic Ramunni, a meteorologist with the Weather Service.
It was the same story up and down the East Coast.
New York had its earliest 80 degree day ever on Tuesday, and the city hit a high of 72 degrees on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, light snow was falling and temperatures had dropped into the 30s.
Richmond, Va., was 87 degrees at 3 p.m. on Wednesday and 32 at the same time on Thursday. The Weather Service office in the region called it the largest 24-hour temperature difference forecasters could find in their records going back to 1948.
“The fact that we had accumulating snow less than a day after we had temperatures in the mid-80s is almost unheard-of,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the Weather Prediction Center.
Mike Montefusco, a meteorologist with the Weather Service office in Wakefield, Va., said meteorologists had expected the weather shift, but it still felt dramatic.
The weather whiplash was spread across a large portion of the East Coast, but Mr. Pereira said the most drastic temperature drops occurred in the Mid-Atlantic. There were reports of accumulating snow on Thursday from Washington, D.C., to southwestern Virginia and even down into the mountains of North Carolina.
“I would say this kind of thing is more common in the Central U.S. where you get the cold air plunging out of Canada,” Mr. Pereira said. “We typically don’t see something quite this extreme in the Eastern U.S.”
March is an especially unsettled time for weather across the United States, and this week was no exception. Tornadoes and strong storms swept the Midwest and Plains on Tuesday. A major storm was creeping across the Hawaiian Islands on Thursday. And a heat wave was building on the West Coast, with record-breaking temperatures expected in Los Angeles to Phoenix.
Amy Graff is a Times reporter covering weather, wildfires and earthquakes.
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