![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/download.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A major arctic blast is plunging temperatures to dangerous levels in much of the country and a developing \u201cbomb cyclone\u201d is set to unload heavy snow and blizzard conditions especially in the Midwest on Thursday and Friday \u2013 a combination making for a perilous few days leading up to Christmas.<\/p>\n
The cold air and storm are affecting nearly every state in some way: More than 110 million people coast-to-coast were under winter-weather alerts for snow or icy conditions Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said.<\/p>\n
And more than 150 million people \u2013 or nearly half of the US population \u2013 were under wind-chill alerts from the Canadian border to the Mexican border and from Washington state to Florida, with below-zero wind chills recorded as far south as Texas on Thursday morning and expected to reach the Southeast by Friday.
\n\u201cLife-threatening wind chills over the Great Plains (will) overspread the eastern half of the nation by Friday,\u201d the Weather Prediction Center said \u2013 and wind chills below minus 50 degrees already have been reported in the past two days in parts of Montana, South Dakota and Wyoming.
\nSome low temperature records were set Thursday morning in the West and South, and in some cases they dropped this week with record-breaking speed: Denver International Airport saw a 37-degree plunge over one hour Wednesday, preliminarily the biggest one-hour drop recorded there, according to the National Weather Service.
\nSnow, meanwhile, has been hitting parts of the West and is expected in the next two days across much of the country\u2019s eastern half.<\/p>\n
A major snowstorm is shaping up for the Midwest and Great Lakes especially \u2013 with widespread light to moderate snowfall \u2013 but with powerful winds that may make for impossible travel conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeavy snowfall rates\u201d of 1 to 2 inches per hour, \u201calong with wind gusts of over 50 mph will result in near-zero visibility and considerable blowing and drifting of snow,\u201d the prediction center said.<\/p>\n
The storm is expected to become a \u201cbomb cyclone\u201d \u2013 a rapidly strengthening storm that drops a certain amount of pressure within 24 hours \u2013 Thursday evening into Friday, reaching the pressure equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane as it moves into the Great Lakes. This could be \u201ca once in a generation type of event,\u201d a forecaster in the weather service\u2019s Buffalo office wrote Tuesday, after noting that kind of strengthening doesn\u2019t often happen in the lower Great Lakes.<\/p>\n
More than 2,000 flights have been canceled across the US on Thursday, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware, snarling air travel amid the busy holiday season. And airlines have canceled more than 1,000 US flights scheduled for Friday.
\nIn South Dakota, a 340-mile stretch of Interstate 90 was closed in both directions Thursday morning, from Rapid City to Sioux Falls, because of blizzard-like conditions, officials said. Near-zero visibility also led to many highway closures between Colorado and Wyoming on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Even Florida won\u2019t be spared, with residents of the Sunshine State expected to see sudden temperature drops Friday. Some cities in the South \u2013 including Nashville and Memphis \u2013 are expected to see snow Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A major arctic blast is plunging temperatures to dangerous levels in much of the country and a developing \u201cbomb cyclone\u201d is set to unload heavy snow and blizzard conditions especially in the Midwest on Thursday and Friday \u2013 a combination making for a perilous few days leading up to Christmas. The cold air and storm […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183897,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10221280388112155_325455220908133":"","twitter_917774835383787521_917774835383787521":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183896"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183898,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183896\/revisions\/183898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wardoon.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}