A blast of arctic air will be flowing southward this week and into the Midlands, following a Christmas blizzard that meteorologists expect to study for years to come.
So if you have some driveway or sidewalk shoveling to do, get it done by Wednesday night, before the slush in the snow piles starts to freeze solid.
“We’ve got arctic air breaking loose out of Canada, and it’s going to plunge southward,” said Scott Dergan, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Valley.
Nighttime temperatures below zero are possible Thursday and Friday, and the mercury in Omaha might have trouble climbing out of single digits on New Year’s Day, according to the weather service.
If there’s any good news in the cold, it’s that concerns about snowmelt and flooding should wait. How slowly the accumulated snow eventually melts will prove crucial to whether the now-departed blizzard causes the region additional problems.
If warmer weather — whenever it arrives — comes as a gradual increase of temperatures into the 20s and 30s, along with some sunshine, the melting should occur at a manageable pace, Dergan said.
The Christmas blizzard that left all that snow will be studied by meteorologists for years because of its unusual aspects, said Dergan and fellow weather service meteorologist Barbara Mayes.
Among them:
--Instead of one storm center, there were multiple waves moving around each other in the middle of the main storm system.
--Blizzard conditions stretched from Oklahoma to the Dakotas.
--Snow and wind lasted at least 48 hours. Typically a winter storm blows in, then out.
--A tightly wound storm center produced intense winds, brought in a lot of moisture and played havoc with temperatures.
“It was an impressive storm system,” Mayes said. “It was so strong and so large, it pulled moisture in from the Atlantic, which is extremely rare.”
Contact the writer:
444-1102, nancy.gaarder@owh.com
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