A cold front has wiped away recent warmth in the East as a plunge of cooler air sweeps across the central, southern and eastern U.S. in April’s final week.
The cooler air arrived in the Midwest over the weekend and will now infiltrate the Southeast and Northeast as we move into the start of the workweek. That means high temperatures will likely hold in the 40s or lower 50s across the Midwest, with mostly 50s expected in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic and 50s and 60s in the South from the southern Plains to the Tennessee Valley.
Frost Advisories and Freeze Watches and Warnings have been issued for some 40 million people across portions of the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Appalachians and Ozarks.
If you live in an area covered by these freeze alerts, cover up or bring any unprotected plants indoors to avoid potential damage to sensitive vegetation.
WHEN IS THE LAST FREEZE IN MY AREA?
Record-cold high temperatures might be set Sunday across parts of Texas and the lower Mississippi Valley as an area of low pressure keeps the region socked into clouds and periods of rain and thunderstorms.
Dallas (53 degrees), Austin (61 degrees), San Antonio (61 degrees) in Texas and Shreveport in Louisiana (59 degrees) are a few cities that could challenge their daily record-cold highs Sunday afternoon (record to beat in parentheses).
Record lows were already set Sunday morning in several cities across the Plains and Midwest, including Sioux City in Iowa (21 degrees), Omaha in Nebraska (26 degrees), Kansas City in Missouri (31 degrees) and Wichita in Kansas (32 degrees – tie).
Additional record lows will likely be tied or broken early this week.
On Monday morning, Paducah in Kentucky is a city that will make a run at its daily record low of 33 degrees set in 1963. Then, on Tuesday morning, Asheville in North Carolina (32 degrees) and Parkersburg in West Virginia (31 degrees) will threaten their daily record lows.
Long-range outlooks from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center suggest this pattern of cooler-than-average temperatures will likely persist through at least the end of April.
However, portions of the West could finally turn warmer than average this week and into next week.