Late-week winter air to chill eastern US after springlike start of February

By Kristina Pydynowski, Senior Meteorologist

January 31,2016; 11:23PM,EST

 

 

The taste of spring kicking off February in the East will not last long with colder air set to return later this week, lasting all the way into the middle of February.
The warmth for the first half of this week, especially on Monday and Wednesday, will have many along the Eastern Seaboard wondering if the calendar has been flipped ahead to April instead of February.

"Temperatures on Wednesday across much of the East will be 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit above normal," AccuWeather Meteorologist Steve Travis said, "however, the springlike feeling will not remain for long."
The passage of a cold front on Wednesday will open the door for cooler air to funnel back in and return the East back to winter reality.
Brutal cold will not follow the front with temperatures instead trending downward to more typical levels for early February. The break that residents caught on their heating bills early this week will not be reversed by a higher-than-normal demand late in the week.

"Temperatures will return to normal levels by Friday with the chill of winter back in the air," Travis said.
"High temperatures on Friday will at best reach the middle 30s across the Great Lakes with highs in the lower 40s along the I-95 corridor [in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic]."
Highs will also be returned to the 50s in most of the Southeast from near Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida.
The return of the colder air will give ski resorts in the Appalachians an opportunity to rebuild their snow bases that thinned out earlier this week.
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AccuWeather meteorologists will also be monitoring the potential for a winter storm to develop along the leading edge of the cold and graze the Northeast coast, especially eastern New England, with snow later in the week.
A storm later in the upcoming weekend also bears watching for the possibility of unleashing windswept snow across a part of the Northeast as another shot of cold air arrives and reminds residents that winter is far from over.
That cold shot will cause "lower-than-normal temperatures to reach the Eastern Seaboard during the week of Feb. 8 to Feb. 12," AccuWeather Long-Range Meteorologist Jack Boston said.
"The pattern setting up next weekend through the second week of February is one that can definitely bring East Coast storms with interior snow and coastal rain."

Tracking many wintry chances over next two weeks

AccuWeather will continue to provide more details of any winter storm threats in the Northeast as this week progresses.
Farther ahead into February, Boston anticipates the cold to ease for the third week of the month before the potential for more colder shots to return to close out February.