Arctic Cold Front: Summer To Winter In Minutes

It is pretty obvious where the cold front was
in this temperature map from Monday.  

They weren't kidding when they said a big Arctic cold front would knife southward across the Plains Monday.

The cold front raced southward and southeastward, causing some temperature contrasts and changes in weather conditions that were some of the most rapid I've seen.

At one point Monday, depending on where you were in Iowa, it was between 27 and 72 degrees, depending upon which side of the cold front you were on.

In Denver, temperatures at one point fell at a rate of a degree a minute. It was in the 60s in Denver before the cold front arrived on Monday. This morning, it's 12 degrees.

Down in the Texas panhandle city of Childress, it was 87 degrees on Monday. This morning, it's 30 degrees.

The cold front, racing southward, was clearly visible on satellite pictures. It created a broad haboob, or dust storm in the High Plains of eastern Colorado and surrounding areas, as the front was accompanied by wind gust of more than 50 mph.

This satellite photo shows a dust storm along
the leading edge of the cold front in southeastern Colorado  

The haboob looked on satellite images like snow being pushed ahead of a plow.

Which kind of fits, because a lot of areas in the Plains have, or will have, enough snow to plow in the coming days.

The cold front blasted southward faster than it is moving eastward, as the initial push of Arctic air was directed more south than east.

But the front is trudging eastward, and the East Coast will feel it by later Wednesday.

It will get chilly in the eastern United States over the next few days but not super, super cold. But the chill will deepen as we head into next week.

In the frigid Plains and Midwest, don't look for any relief from this early winter weather anytime soon. The cold air might have come in fast, but it's going to stick around.

The weather pattern is getting stuck again. There's a big ridge that is setting up near the North American west coast, and a big southward dip in the jet stream into the central United States. That really weird, extreme jet stream pattern looks like it will stay in place for at least the next two weeks, probably longer.

Expect lots of winter weather, and several threats of snow in most places east of the Rockies and away from the Gulf Coast for the rest of the month.