Freeze warnings are in place for parts of six states as a weather system that brought blizzard conditions to the Plains is forecast to leave the mid-South with an early morning frost on Wednesday.
The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued alerts for Arizona, Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, cautioning that sub-freezing temperatures in the region could kill crops and damage outdoor plumbing.
In a forecast on Tuesday, the NWS said that behind the cyclone—which developed over the weekend and saw the heaviest snow over the Plains and Great Lakes through Monday—a "chilly airmass will continue to spread across the Great Plains and Midwest into Wednesday."
It added that daytime maximum temperatures were set to be 15-25 degrees Fahrenheit below average.
On Wednesday, though, the weather agency said that this would be relatively short-lived, as a weather pattern expected to bring snow to the Rockies would support above-average temperatures from the Plains into the Midwest through the weekend.
"Temperatures only warm up in the lower 60s Wednesday under mostly sunny skies," Todd Yakoubian, a meteorologist for KARK in Little Rock, Arkansas, wrote on Tuesday evening. "A warming trend starts later this week and that will take us to near 80 degrees Easter Sunday."
In northwestern Arkansas until 9 a.m. CT (10 a.m. ET), the NWS predicts temperatures will reach as low as 28 degrees.
A similar warning is in place for central and western Missouri, where the mercury is expected to plummet to 22 degrees until 10 a.m. This cold trend will continue into west-central Illinois, where temperatures will be as low as 27 degrees.
Across southeastern Kansas, temperatures are expected to reach 24 degrees, while in northeastern Oklahoma, the early morning frost will be marginally warmer at 28 degrees.
Last week, 10 states in the region were subjected to sub-zero temperatures as a high-pressure system stretching from the northern Plains to the Gulf of Mexico pushed cold air to the east of the weather front.
Earlier in January, a blast of cold air from the Arctic descended over the continental U.S., bringing snow to northern states and freezing wind chills to the Deep South.
Clear skies following showers and thunderstorms over the southwest will promote an overnight frost in southern Arizona, where temperatures could reach as low as 28 degrees.
The NWS field office in Tuscon, Arizona said a warming trend would begin on Wednesday and continue into Saturday, before a storm from the Pacific arrives in the region into early next week.
Western states have already faced several bouts of heavy rain and snow in recent months, having been subjected to a prolific series of atmospheric river storms that brought a rare blizzard warning for Seattle in early January.
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Aleks Phillips is a Newsweek U.S. News Reporter based in London. His focus is on U.S. politics and the environment. ... Read more
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