The speed with which winter’s long-absent chill swept back across the Plains and Rockies was breathtaking Thursday. By evening, springlike warmth, firmly entrenched only 24 hours earlier, was just a memory, replaced by howling northerly winds and subzero or single-digit temps. Wind chills of -30(degrees) gripped an area from Montana to the Dakotas while an array of winter storm warnings were hoisted across 18 states–urging that the invading arctic air be taken seriously.
In Rapid City, S.D., where readings had reached 62(degrees) only the day before, the mercury had plunged to 3(degrees) as the sun set late Thursday–a stunning 59-degree pullback.
Winter storm watches continued for Las Vegas–a city expecting the chill to be its coldest in five years–while snow levels were predicted to drop to just 1,500 feet above sea level before the weekend, threatening snow in the mountains surrounding Los Angeles. The chill, possibly the coldest in a decade, prompted frost and freeze advisories across interior California.
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Tom Skilling is chief meteorologist at WGN-TV. His forecasts can be seen Monday through Friday on WGN-TV News at noon and 9 p.m.
WGN-TV meteorologists Steve Kahn, Richard Koeneman and Paul Dailey plus weather producer Bill Snyder contribute to this page.
