WASHINGTON: A blast of Arctic air gripped much of the central and eastern portions of the US on Friday in sub-freezing temperatures well below normal for this time of year, setting records from Iowa and Michigan to New York.
The frigid weather pattern stemmed from a fluctuation in the clockwise circulation of polar air, also known as the polar vortex, that was drawing icy air from Canada into northern tier of the U.S., according to meteorologist Marc Chenard of the US Weather Prediction Center outside Washington.
The Arctic chill, plunging temperatures much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit below average, began on Thursday and was expected to persist in waves over the next week or two, making it the most extensive and intense cold snap of the season, Chenard said. The official start of winter is still more than two weeks away.
“Cold air is spilling into the central and eastern parts of the country, coming down from the Arctic,” he said. The deep freeze stretched from the northern Plains through the Great Lakes region and Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic and New England.
Colder-than-normal temperatures, though still above freezing, were expected to dip into the Southeast, according to Chenard.
Local weather forecasts in Indiana and Oklahoma called for the possibility of freezing fog, tiny super-cooled water droplets suspended in air that can freeze on exposed surfaces, causing a dangerous road condition known as black ice.
On Thursday, temperatures fell to new benchmark lows in more than a dozen places across Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota, Chenard said.
Iowa, where temperatures have been tracked since 1895, accounted for most of the record cold, including an all-time low on Thursday of 19 degrees below zero in the prairie town of Spencer, a full 10 degrees colder than its previous record of minus-9 degrees set in 2005.
Published in Dawn, December 7th, 2025
