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the decision after the state forecast called for "life threatening wind chills" through Tuesday morning.
• And though this cold spell will last just a few days as warmer air comes behind, it likely will freeze over the Great Lakes and other bodies of water, meaning frigid temperatures will likely last the rest of winter, Maue said.
• "It raises the chances for future cold," he said, adding it could include next month's Super Bowl in New Jersey.
• Snow already on the ground and fresh powder expected in some places ahead of the cold air will reduce the sun's heating effect, so nighttime lows will plummet thanks to strong northwest winds that will deliver the Arctic blast, Maue said. And there's no warming effect from the Gulf to counteract the cold air, he said.
• The cold blast will sweep through parts of New England, where residents will have just dug out from a snowstorm and the frigid temperatures that followed. Parts of the central Midwest could also see up to a foot of snow just as the cold sweeps in pulling temperatures to 10 below zero in the St. Louis area.
• Even places accustomed to normally mild to warmer winters will see a plunge in temperatures early next week, including Atlanta where the high is expected to hover in the mid-20s on Tuesday.
• "This one happens to be really big and it's going to dive deep into the continental U.S. And all that cold air is going to come with it," said Sally Johnson, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls.
• It's relatively uncommon to have such frigid air blanket so much of the U.S., maybe once a decade or every couple of decades, Maue said. But in the long-run the deep temperature dives are less meaningful for comparison to other storms than daytime highs that are below-zero and long cold spells, he said.
• And so far, this winter is proving to be a cold one.
• "Right now for the winter we will have had two significant shots of major Arctic air and we're only through the first week of January. And we had a pretty cold December," Maue said.
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