Welcome to the Arctic (air)!

The coldest air in several years has settled in across the eastern U.S. this Monday morning. To illustrate how much the temperature changed since Sunday morning check out this graphic (Mecklenburg county is at the white star):

To further drive home how cold this air mass is just note that air temperatures (in the upper 20s as this is written) will remain below freezing until Thursday afternoon. Today's high looks to top out right around 30 degrees, but that will be accompanied by northwest winds gusting up to 20 mph. The resulting wind chills will mostly cancel out the warming effect of abundant sunshine. 

Overnight the winds will calm and, given the very dry air and clear skies, temperatures will drop like a rock. By sunrise Tuesday local thermometers will be registering the low teens, with several spots likely dropping into the single digits. To make it seem even colder tomorrow will feature mostly cloudy skies as a low pressure system scoots along the Gulf Coast and moves out over the Atlantic. Tuesday afternoon highs will only climb into the upper 20s.

That low pressure system originally appeared to track close enough to the East Coast to create a significant snowfall for Mecklenburg county. However, the latest forecast model runs indicate this dome of very dense cold air will keep that storm far enough south and east to prevent that snowfall. There could be some flurries locally Tuesday night, but that looks to be the extent of it.

Bundle up!