(Bloomberg) – A deep blast of Arctic cold will threaten daily temperature records from New York to Texas starting late Tuesday and running to Thursday.
New York City’s temperature will drop from 57 degrees (14 Celsius) down to 20 over the course of Tuesday as a cold front roars through, bringing rain and possibly a few wet snow flakes as the precipitation dies down, the National Weather Service said. Manhattan could break a record low temperature for the date Wednesday if readings fall below 24 degrees.
“The warmest temperature for the day has probably already passed,” said Marc Chenard, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. “By the time we get into this afternoon, temperatures will be in the 30s. Then tonight is when we get down to the teens in Boston and 20s further south.”
The cold has already clutched the Midwest. Chicago received 3.6 inches of snow, a record for Nov. 11, and the temperature was just 8 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday. Winter weather advisories and storm warnings stretch from the Ohio Valley through upstate New York into Maine. Freeze warnings cover the South from Texas to South Carolina.
On Monday, 1,847 flights were canceled as the front moved across the U.S., according to FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service.
Electricity costs for Northeast Massachusetts and Boston on 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, 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 will punch deep into the central and southern U.S. as well, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, Chenard said. Houston could fall to 30 degrees late Tuesday and 27 in Dallas.
The deep cold won’t last, though. Computer forecast models predict November could end with closer-to-seasonal temperatures.
