February’s end bringing wild weather to much of US
BOSTON — February’s end is bringing wild weather to much of the United States, with record heat allowing for golf in Wisconsin and outdoor food trucks in Minnesota, along with an increased fire risk across much of the Great Plains. But blinding snow in the Northwest is blowing eastward, and places like Chicago should see temperatures swinging dramatically from balmy to bitter cold again.
“Definitely not the weather we would expect in February. It’s usually super snowy, freezing, you know, ice everywhere. And so we are just trying to take advantage of a very nice week this week,” said Tania Sepulveda, a 30-year-old Chicago therapist who was “working from home” Monday, using her laptop in a grassy spot along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
The sunny weather won’t last that long. A powerful storm started dumping snow that could reach several feet in higher elevations of the West promises a return of winter conditions to the central U.S., where it’s been unseasonably warm. High winds are already blowing, raising the risk of wildfires across the Great Plains.
The National Weather Service warned that travel could be dangerous later Monday across parts of the Oregon Cascades and Northern Rockies, predicting near-blizzard conditions with one to two inches of snow an hour and winds reaching upwards of 65 mph.
The storm will move into the Great Basin and Central Rockies Tuesday, carrying much colder temperatures and strong winds across the inner mountain West, said Andrew Orrison, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland. “We’ll be very wintry like for the next two days,” he added.
The West is just one place with unusual, and in some cases, dangerous weather conditions. Here is what to expect elsewhere.
It’s warm in the heartland
This time of year should be the coldest in places like Chicago. But the city and many others across the central U.S. are getting an early taste of summer with temperatures in the 60s and 70s.
The warm conditions have continued since a balmy weekend brought temperatures reaching into the 60s in Denver, Chicago and Des Moines, Iowa. Kansas City, Missouri, enjoyed temperatures in the mid-70s.
In Chicago, temperatures reached 72 degrees by Monday afternoon, breaking Chicago’s old record of 64 degrees. Winds were expected to ramp up to 25 mph.
Highs on Monday were expected to reach the mid-60s across southern Wisconsin and extend as far north as Rhinelander, a city of 8,000 just below Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It reached 64 degrees in La Crosse, eclipsing the record for the date of 61 degrees.
“We’re blowing away the records in northern Illinois into south central and southwestern Wisconsin,” said Mark Gehring, a weather service meteorologist in Sullivan, Wisconsin.
Monday’s warm temperatures will “just about guarantee” that the typically chilly Minneapolis area will have its warmest winter on record, the local weather service office said. While Monday’s forecast high of 63 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport would be one degree below the record set in 1896, St. Cloud in central Minnesota was expected to reach 59, breaking the old record of 55 set in 1958.
But it isn’t quite time for scarves and gloves to be stored until next winter.
Places like Chicago will see a dramatic drop in temperatures by Wednesday, with highs just below freezing and winds gusting as hard as 30 mph. In Minnesota, colder weather Tuesday and Wednesday could bring an inch or two of slushy snow that could freeze and make for a dangerous Wednesday morning commute, the weather service said.