Winter Marches East Across The United States

Marquette, Michigan a few days ago. Big
chunks of the country are seeing similar scenes
this weekend, and will during the upcoming week 

For the past week, the bout of Arctic weather focused on the Rocky Mountain States and the Northern Plains, with some record low temperatures found here and there across the Southeast.

The eastern United States has gotten chilly over the past few days, but it hasn't been exactly brutal.

But, as always, things will get worse.

Winter is continuing its march, and this week, the eastern United States will join the Arctic fun, as the Plains and Rockies continue to experience the, um, joys of January in November.

Sunday morning, there was an incredibly long stripe of winter weather advisories and spotty winter storm warnings from New Mexico all the way northeastward into New England.

There's a storm riding along a reinforcing shot of cold air, so that explains the moderate snow and some icing expected along that entire strip of the nation.

The big East Coast cities should get mostly rain out of this, but there could be a little bit of snow toward the end of the storm later Monday.

Then the cold air becomes entrenched where it hasn't already.

Out in Minneapolis, they will probably break the record for the most consecutive days below freezing in November. The record is 11 such days, and they will probably go past that.

Across some of the Great Lakes states and into northern New England, the temperature will probably fall below freezing Monday or Monday night and not rise above freezing again until as late as early next week.

Around the Great Lakes, especially in western New York, part of northwestern Pennsylvania and far northeastern Ohio, the lake effect snow machine will go crazy, and some snow belt communities will be measuring the snow in feet, not inches.

For those of you who aren't really ready for such an early winter, here's a glimmer of hope: The weather pattern toward the very end of November looks like it might modify a bit, so the cold won't be as intense. There might even be brief spells of above normal temperatures in the Plains, Midwest and Northeast.