ABC News(NEW YORK) — Numerous record-low temperatures have been broken from Minnesota to New York in the last few days — and the bitter cold isn’t letting up yet.
One of those records was set in Flint, Michigan, where the temperature hit minus-17 degrees — the coldest temperature ever recorded in the month of December in the city. The city broke records three days in a row this week.
One of the coldest actual temperatures measured was in Cotton, Minnesota, where it dropped to minus-41 degrees Thursday morning.
More arctic air is on the way for the Midwest and the Northeast for the holiday weekend.
The coldest night is expected to be New Year’s Eve across the eastern U.S., when wind chills are expected to drop to as low as minus-55 degrees in the northern Plains and 20 to 30 degrees below in the Northeast.
For New York City, during the ball drop in Times Square on Sunday night at midnight, a temperature of 11 degrees and wind chill of minus-4 is forecast. If this happens, it would tie the second-coldest temperature ever recorded during the ball drop and the coldest since 1962.
Ahead of the cold blast, a clipper system will bring a swath of accumulating snow from the northern Plains into the Ohio Valley and into the Northeast Friday into Saturday.
By Saturday, the storm system will move through the Northeast bringing anywhere between a dusting to 3 inches of snow for the I-95 corridor from New York City to Washington, D.C.
The heaviest snow over the next 48 hours will be near the Great Lakes, where there are winter storm warnings and lake-effect snow warnings for as much as 18 inches of snow in western New York and Pennsylvania and up to 15 inches in Michigan.
Northwest rain and snow
In addition, a new storm system will move into the Northwest and into the Rockies Friday into Saturday, bringing a prolonged period of heavy rain in the lower elevations from Seattle to Portland, and heavy snow in the mountains.
Because of the heavy rainfall forecast, flood watches have been posted for the Seattle and Portland metro areas, where some areas outside of the cities could see 4 to 8 inches of rain.
In the mountains, snow will be measured in feet. Some areas could see more than 36 inches of snow.
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