Cold locks into area, more snow on the way

Staff and wire

Dangerous, bitter cold has settled into this part of north-central Montana for the week, along with more snow predicted, although relatively balmy weather is expected by the weekend in time for Christmas.

The week started in subzero temperatures with the high Sunday in Havre of 1 degree and the low dropping to minus 11.

The temperature stayed below zero Monday with the high at about 4 a.m. in Havre, a high of minus 6. The temperature continued to drop for most of the day.

The low in Havre Monday was minus 27 at 8:55 p.m., though it had climbed by mid-morning today to minus 16.

Snow is again predicted through tonight for this area, with light snow falling in Havre this morning.

A winter weather advisory is in place today through 5 a.m. Wednesday with 1 inch to 4 inches of new accumulation possible.

The region has been dumped on with snow this month, with 20.9 inches reported through Monday at the National Weather Service recording station at the Havre City-County Airport.

Weather Service has a wind chill advisory in place for this region through noon Friday, with wind chills as low as 60 below zero.

The forecast predicts the cold to stay until the weekend, with highs today in this region expected to be around minus 10 to minus 12 and lows in the minus 20s.

Highs Wednesday and Thursday are expected to be from 10 to 20 degrees below zero with the lows Wednesday night and Thursday night expected to push toward minus 40.

Temperatures are expected to moderate a bit Friday, with highs in this area expected to hit near or slightly above zero with lows in the minus teens.

The warming is expected to continue, with highs predicted just above freezing in the western part of this area and in the 20s and teens farther east, with lows in the teens.

Temperatures are expected to get into the 40s for Christmas Day and Monday, with lows in the 20s.

And The Associated Press reports that forecasters were warning this week of treacherous holiday travel and life-threatening cold for much of the nation as an arctic air mass blows into the already-frigid southern United States.

“We’re looking at much-below normal temperatures, potentially record-low temperatures leading up to the Christmas holiday,” said Zack Taylor, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

A winter storm warning with very cold temperatures was issued for the city of Seattle and much of Western Washington through today.

Heavy snow is expected starting Monday evening with 2 to 8 inches expected, according to the National Weather Service. The city of Seattle sent out an alert Monday saying people should avoid travel today if possible and that emergency shelters were open.

In the Olympic and Cascade mountains, from 5 to 18 inches of snow is expected to fall with the heaviest amounts over Snoqualmie and Stevens passes. Officials said the heaviest snow will fall today. Snow in the mountains could continue into Wednesday.

Weather Service said people should plan on difficult travel with potentially hazardous conditions along Interstate 90 especially over the Cascades. Heavy snow, poor visibility and whiteout conditions prompted officials to tweet that the Washington State Patrol would be enforcing vehicle chain requirements. U.S. 97’s Blewett Pass was closed east of Cle Elum earlier Monday because of multiple jackknifed semi-trailer trucks, officials said.

Flights at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport were delayed and canceled throughout Monday. As of 7:40 p.m., nearly 400 domestic flights in and out of the airport had been delayed, with 28 cancellations, according to FlightAware, an online tracker.

Alaska Airlines said it has also canceled roughly 100 flights today, “with more cancellations possible, depending on the weather,” KOMO-TV reported.

Temperatures from the teens to upper 20s Fahrenheit, with winds making it feel even colder, also are expected all week.

The polar air arrives as an earlier storm system gradually winds down in the northeastern U.S. after burying parts of the region under two feet of snow. More than 80,000 customers in New England were still without power Sunday morning, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.

The incoming artic front brings “extreme and prolonged freezing conditions for southern Mississippi and southeast Louisiana,” the National Weather Service said in a special weather statement Sunday.

By Thursday night, temperatures will plunge as low as 13 degrees in Jackson, Mississippi; and around 5 degrees in Nashville, Tennessee, the National Weather Service predicts.

For much of the U.S., the winter weather will get worse before it gets better.

The coming week has the potential for “the coldest air of the season” as the strong arctic front marches across the eastern two-thirds of the country in the days before Christmas, according to the latest forecasts from the federal Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

The center warned of a “massive expanse of frigid temperatures from the Northern Rockies/Northern Plains to the Midwest through the middle of the week, and then reaching the Gulf Coast and much of the Eastern U.S. by Friday and into the weekend.”

The arctic air was already pouring into Montana Sunday night, but that wasn’t deterring residents from ice fishing and hunting coyotes.

Ice fishing will continue through the cold blast, since the temperatures won’t scare away anglers there — “not the hard-core ones anyway,” said Jason Mundel, who runs the Ripp’n Lipps Guide Service in northeastern Montana.

Mundel said it was 4 degrees there Sunday night, and a coyote contest was still going on in a nearby community. “Those guys are just out in the elements, just bundled up,” he said.

In Atlanta, where temperatures are set to drop below freezing early Monday morning, forecasters warn of even colder air by late in the week, according to the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City, Georgia. The low Friday night in Atlanta will be around 13 degrees with the high temperature Saturday still below the freezing mark at around 29 degrees, the Weather Service projects.

Freezing temperatures can take lives in an instant — a heartbreaking reality that Atlanta homeless advocate George Chidi knows firsthand.

He went to check on a woman with severe mental health issues in downtown Atlanta earlier this year, and found she had died of suspected hypothermia just hours earlier. Her body was found outside the Greyhound bus station, which is open 24 hours in the heart of downtown Atlanta, he said.

“She died within 100 feet of three heated buildings,” Chidi said.

He said people without housing who die in freezing weather often do so because they are battling alcohol, drugs or severe mental illness, or they do not trust others and find themselves on the streets rather than a shelter with other people.

Homeless people in southern states are also vulnerable to its weather patterns that make it comfortable one week, but suddenly freezing the next.

“A main factor isn’t the temperature itself,” Chidi said. “It’s the speed with which the temperature drops.”

Florida will not have a white Christmas, but forecasters are expecting that weekend to be unusually cold throughout the state.

Northern Florida cities such as Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Pensacola have predicted lows in the 20s on Christmas Eve, with highs of about 40.

In the Northeast, utility companies brought in extra workers from other states but were hampered by slick roads and dangerous conditions.

“This was a heavy, wet snow so that had impacts on both travel and the infrastructure,” said Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Police across New England responded to hundreds of crashes or vehicles sliding off the road this weekend. Maine State Police said Saturday night they had responded to more than 180 crashes since Friday evening. There were only minor injuries.

Vermont officials said they’re finding locations for potential warming centers in the hardest-hit areas, in case they’re needed. State officials warned Saturday that some customers’ power may not be restored for two to three days.

“Last night we had some people come in who weren’t able to cook for themselves, and so we definitely made sure that we had room for them,” Becket Gourlay, a host at the Waterhouse Restaurant in Peterborough, New Hampshire, said on Sunday.

“Even today we had some people who came in to watch the final match for the World Cup because their TVs were out,” Gourlay said.

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Walker reported from New York. AP writers Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston and Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.

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Follow Julie Walker on Twitter: twitter.com/jwalkreporter .