A so-called "polar vortex," or arctic blast, will reportedly roll down from Alaska and the far north into the Pacific Northwest in the coming days. It will then move on down to the Central and Midwest portions of the country over the following five to 10 days, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue.
The National Weather Service's (NWS) Climate Prediction Center says the cold blast will really make its presence known late next week, bringing with it temperatures that in some areas will be a full 78 degrees lower than normal for this time of year.
An ongoing stratospheric warming event over the North Pole is taking the blame for this threat as it is displacing the polar vortex and sending all that very cold air down into the lower 48 states.
Some areas will receive freezing rain while others will get dumped with lots of snow. One silver lining is a forming ridge in the Southeast that could end up containing the cold air to the western half of the United States and Canada.\
If the arctic blast arrives as planned, it could be comparable to the cold weather disaster of Storm Uri in February 2021 that left more than four million Texans without electricity or heat for a record 70.5 hours.
In that storm, a shocking 365 generators were knocked offline, leaving much of Texas with no power. Because the Lone Star State is ill-equipped for such weather events, it ended up being one of the worst disasters in the state's history.
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