Records Threatened From N.Y. to Texas With Blast of Arctic Air

Bloomberg

Published Nov 11, 2019 04:15PM ET

Updated Nov 11, 2019 06:42PM ET

Records Threatened From N.Y. to Texas With Blast of Arctic Air

(Bloomberg) -- A deep blast of Arctic cold will shake daily temperature records from Texas to New York Tuesday and Wednesday before the chill starts to slide away by Thursday.Winter-like cold will sweep out of the Great Plains, where temperatures only reached 12 degrees Fahrenheit (minus-11 Celsius) on Monday in Fargo, bringing rain and snow ahead of it, said Patrick Burke, a senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

New York City’s temperature will drop from a high of 61 on Monday to a low of 24 late Tuesday. Winds could make it feel closer to 10. The normal low is about 43 degrees.

“We’re looking at the potential for records from Texas to New York, including New England and the Great Lakes,” Burke said by telephone. “This may be more typical that we would see this type of an air mass in December, January and February.”

Snow and cold has already reached Chicago, forecast to get about 4 inches(10 centimeters) late Monday with lows falling to 12 degrees, the National Weather Service reported. Nearly 950 flights in and out of Chicago were canceled Monday, according to FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service.

Electricity costs for Northeast Massachusetts and Boston for Tuesday jumped 20% from Monday’s high to $53.72 a megawatt-hour for the hour ending at 6 p.m., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In Texas, the power prices at the North Hub will peak at $212.85 a megawatt-hour in the hour ending at 7 a.m. local time, a seven-fold gain from Monday’s peak hourly price of $30.17.

The cold won’t last. Computer forecast models predict November could end much milder with temperatures closer to normal or even a little warmer in places.