Think it’s cold now? Just wait for this week’s Arctic blast that’s poised to break records

Think it’s cold now? Just wait for this week’s Arctic blast that’s poised to break records

CNN Meteorologists Briana Waxman, Andrew Freedman

Wed, December 3, 2025 at 7:23 AM UTC

3 min read

These areas are poised to set new record low temperatures Thursday and Friday mornings. - CNN Weather

It’s cold now, but the next punch of Arctic air will take it to another level. In the wake of the latest winter storm to sweep across the country, more than 200 million people will wake up to freezing temperatures as the coldest air of the season spills across the Plains, Midwest, Great Lakes and into the Northeast. This widespread plunge puts dozens of daily records in play.

After several rounds of snow over the past week, the Midwest is now preparing for the coldest temperatures of the season.

The bitter cold from Canada drops into the Northern Plains and Upper Midwest Wednesday. High temperatures will be 15 to 25 degrees below normal and struggle to reach 10 degrees in portions of the Dakotas. Over a dozen cities in the Upper Midwest could set new record cold daily highs.

Thursday morning will be the coldest as actual air temperatures are forecast to plunge into the double-digits below zero as far south as Iowa and Nebraska. Wind chills of -10 to -25 will be common.

Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are each set to break the daily low temperature record on Thursday, falling to -11 degrees and -7 degrees, respectively. Cedar Rapids could only warm into the single digits above zero Thursday afternoon, which would set a new record for the coldest high temperature for the day.

Afternoon temperatures across much of the Midwest will be stuck in the teens — 20 to 30 degrees lower than normal for early December.

Records could fall from Illinois to the East Coast on Friday morning as well. Chicago could drop below its daily low temperature record of 4 degrees while Indianapolis could approach its record of 8 degrees – last set in 1886. Low temperatures will be in the teens across Pennsylvania, which would break daily records in multiple cities.

Friday morning will be the coldest day since early March in New York City with a low temperature of around 20 degrees. Records could fall for the city’s JFK and LaGuardia airports. Wind chills will sting.

Blame the polar vortex

The winter storms hitting the US this week – and forecast to occur over the next couple of weeks – can be tied in large part to the displacement of the polar vortex that started in late November, researchers tell CNN.

The polar vortex is a circular current of strong winds over the Arctic that can keep cold air locked up in that region. Recently, though, it weakened and slid southward towards the midlatitudes, spilling cold, Arctic air into heavily populated areas.

This can create stormier conditions, said Andrea Lopez Lang, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as that cold air from up north collides with relatively warmer air.

And the weak polar vortex also means a wavier jet stream. These are the wind currents that flow west-to-east across the Northern Hemisphere. A wavy jet stream can give people weather whiplash, said Judah Cohen, a meteorologist at MIT.

Over the rest of December, we can expect frequent oscillations between milder-than-average conditions and frigid temperatures as storms move through.

However, Lopez Lang cautioned this polar vortex event isn’t the only factor behind those upcoming temperature fluctuations. “It’s definitely contributing, but it’s not the whole story,” she said.

Is this the end of the bitter cold? Research meteorologist Amy Butler of NOAA warned there is another shockwave of cold expected by mid-December. “It does look like the polar vortex will become more stretched out over North America in about 7-10 days,” she noted.

We are still about three weeks away from the official start of winter, but Mother Nature is off to quite a head start.

CNN Meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Taylor Ward contributed to this report.

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