Records Threatened From N.Y. to Texas With Arctic Blast
Records Threatened From N.Y. to Texas With Blast of Arctic Air
(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 will drop from 57 degrees Fahrenheit (14 Celsius) to 20 degrees over the course of the day on Tuesday as a cold front roars through, bringing rain and possibly a few wet snowflakes, the National Weather Service said. Manhattan could break a record low for the date on Wednesday if readings there fall below 24 degrees.
“All of them will probably bust record lows for Wednesday morning -- JFK, LaGuardia, Newark,” said Rob Carolan, owner of Hometown Forecast Services in New Hampshire. “I could see them all falling.”
Since early morning, the temperature in Manhattan’s Central Park fell almost 20 degrees, and at mid-day was hovering at around 38.
The cold is already clutching the Midwest. Chicago received 3.6 inches (9 centimeters) of snow, a record for Nov. 11, and the temperature was just 14 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday. Freeze warnings cover the South from Texas to South Carolina.
In Texas, on-peak electricity at the hub that includes Dallas jumped 755% to average $146.86 a megawatt-hour as of 11:12 a.m. Eastern time, according to Genscape data. Spot natural gas in the Northeast jumped to eight-month highs, touching $8 per million British thermal units in New England on the Intercontinental Exchange on Tuesday, said David Hoy, an energy trader at Dynasty Power in Calgary.
The cold will punch deep into the central and southern U.S. as well, reaching the Gulf of Mexico, said Marc Chenard, a senior branch forecaster at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. Houston could fall to 30 degrees late Tuesday and 27 in Dallas. On Monday, 1,847 flights were canceled as the front moved across the U.S., according to FlightAware, a Houston-based airline tracking service.
The deep cold won’t last, though. Computer forecast models predict November could end with closer-to-seasonal temperatures.
To contact the reporters on this story: Brian K. Sullivan in Boston at bsullivan10@bloomberg.net;Naureen S. Malik in New York at nmalik28@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tina Davis at tinadavis@bloomberg.net, Reg Gale, Steven Frank
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