A massive arctic air mass, something that we haven't seen the likes of inrecent years, will push down into the United States next week. The sea ofarctic air will cause temperatures to run 15 to 20 degrees below normal acrossa broad area. That's making a big statement in January, considering it'ssupposed to be cold to begin with. Ultimately, the arctic air mass will expandto cover all of the Central and Eastern parts of the country.An unknown at this point is a possible storm that could have impacts from theeastern slopes of the Rockies to the Eastern Seaboard. We'll know more aboutthat threat as time goes on. Right now, the thing looks pretty good on paper,but so have other potential storms that never materialized.
The problem with computer forecasts is if they pick up an error early, thatflaw keeps getting magnified with time. In other words, in the longer term, theweather presented by the computer models often looks worse than it actuallyturns out.
Story By AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist John Kocet.
