Frigid weather hits South, Northeast this weekend after brutal winter storms

This weekend, temperatures will be below freezing with wind chills as low as minus 20 to minus 30 degrees across the Northern Plains, the National Weather Service said. Frigid air was expected to drift into the Midwest from Canada, and millions were under wind chill advisories. Meanwhile, heavy rain was set to hit the West Coast starting Saturday and continuing through early next week.

“While this arctic outbreak will not be as cold as the previous one, sub-zero temperatures will reach as far south as Missouri and Kansas this morning,” the weather service said in an advisory early Saturday.

The chill comes after major East Coast cities, including New York and Washington, D.C., and a large swath of the Midwest saw several inches of snow over the last week, delaying travel, shuttering schools and causing dozens of people to die of hypothermia or weather-related accidents. Some places saw major snowfall, including Michigan City, Indiana, where there were 17 inches of lake-effect snow.

The series of storms over the last two weeks led to at least 55 deaths across the country, many due to hypothermia or accidents caused by weather conditions.

Nineteen people died in Tennessee, including a 25-year-old man who was found inside a mobile home after a space heater fell over and shut off, officials said. 

“There was ice on the walls in there,” Bob Johnson, chief deputy for the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office, said.

Others died in traffic wrecks. In Washington County, Tennessee, a patient in an ambulance and a person in a pickup truck were killed in a head-on crash after the truck lost control on a snowy road.

Five people died in Kentucky from the freezing weather, and another five – most of whom were unhoused – died in Washington state, officials said. At least two others died in Louisiana.

Freeze to continue this weekend

Wind chill advisories extended from parts of Montana to northwestern Georgia on Saturday morning, as forecasters warned about sub-zero temperatures that could feel much colder due to wind. 

“Frigid air” passing over the relatively warm water of the Great Lakes is also expected to create more lake-effect snow downwind of the lakes, the weather service said. Also on Saturday, upslope snow is expected from West Virginia to southwestern Pennsylvania.