TOLEDO, Ohio — With a wintry one-two punch, much of the country experienced bitter cold and accumulating snow this week. Here at home, the workweek started off with sub-zero wind chills and ended with accumulating snowfall.
Much of the country shared in the wintry weather, feeling record cold and heavy snowfall. In this week's edition of Climate Friday, Meteorologist John Burchfield breaks down the cause and impacts of this wintry weather across the country.
Let's start off with a recap of the cold and snow that affected Toledo as well along with all of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan. With temperatures plummeting to negative two, wind chills dropped to the double digits below zero.
The lowest wind chill, or "feels like" temperature recorded this week in the Toledo area was -24 degrees. With wind gusts up to 43 mph, the combination of cold air and and frigid breeze left us with 83 consecutive hours with wind chills below zero.
While wind chills finally made it above zero, air temperatures have remained below freezing since Saturday, January 13, which featured a high temperature of 38 degrees. Temperatures will likely stay below freezing until at least Monday afternoon.
In addition to frigid overnight lows, daytime highs stayed bitter, and both Monday and Tuesday brought afternoon temperatures maxing out at 11 degrees. Though this week has felt frigid, January as a whole is fairly close to average in the temperature department due to the relatively mild start. After this wintry week of weather, next week will bring a significant pattern flip that will send temperatures surging to the 40s.
EARLIER COVERAGE: Climate Friday | Pattern flip: When have we seen drastic temperature shifts in the past?
Across the country, cold and snowy conditions have impacted much of the lower 48 US states recently. In the past month, 572 daily snowfall records have been broken. Nationwide, 159 overnight low temperature records have been shattered in the past month, and an additional 218 high temperature records have gone down.
In Denver, Colorado, back-to-back negative 19 degree days were recorded Monday and Tuesday, logging the coldest January temperature since 1963. Elsewhere in Colorado, the city of Limon felt frigid temperatures drop to 30 below zero, the coldest reading since the weather observation site started in 1948.
Elsewhere, Kansas City, Missouri felt the winter chill with temperatures plummeting to -16 degrees, making it the coldest reading since 1989. Rapid City, South Dakota, known for its frigid winter weather, experienced its coldest temperature since 1996 as the mercury plunged to -23 degrees.
Other parts of the country saw unusual snowfall, including Nashville, Tennessee, where 7.6 inches accumulated between Sunday and Monday, covering roadways and slowing travel. 6.3 inches of this snow fell Monday alone, shattering the former daily snowfall record of 2.2 inches set on January 15, 1944.
RELATED: Roadway runoff: Salting the roads can make them safer during snow, but environmental impact remains
From coast to coast, this week dealt out wintry weather, and it's not done yet. Bitter cold conditions will continue into the start of the weekend as accumulating snow pushes east into New England.
After a harsh week of winter weather, the pattern will turn much milder next week. The WTOL 11 weather team is monitoring the potential for a wintry mix Tuesday morning that may bring slick and icy conditions for parts of northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.
After that, precipitation will turn to the liquid variety as temperatures climb to the 40s. Rain chances will continue into the latter half of the workweek, melting away most of our snow accumulations. Overall, the weather pattern will turn toward the mild conditions common in El Niño winters.
If and when wintry weather makes a comeback, the WTOL 11 weather team will be the first to let you know about it! Subscribe to the Climate Friday Newsletter for more in-depth weather and climate-related information every week.
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