Jan. 23 (UPI) — Cold weather weary New Yorkers can look forward to a light warmup this weekend after a powerful deep freeze left temperatures well below normal, even for a typically frigid part of the country in winter.
Even nationwide, very cold temperatures continue to affect many regions of the country from the Rockies east to the East Coast, forecasters said, adding that a slow warm-up is expected heading into the weekend.
In New York, morning temperatures in some places outside the city were below zero but even Central Park started the day at 10 degrees, the coldest day in the park since February, 2023.
At a news conference Wednesday, FDNY officials warned people to avoid makeshift home-heating methods which could be dangerous.
“We do not want you to use your oven or your stove to warm your apartment. First of all, that doesn’t really work, and second of all, it is a tremendous fire hazard,” FDNY Commissioner Robert Tucker said. “If your oven is used, there is likely to be a fire, and we don’t want that to happen.”
Parts of New York and New Jersey saw their coldest lows in five years. Montgomery, N.Y., about 60 miles north of Manhattan, reached a low of -19, its lowest temperatures in almost six years.
Wind chills in the Catskills and New Jersey are predicted to reach -25 before the cold snap breaks.
But there is a warm up on the horizon.
Highs closer to the city will reach into the 30s over the weekend and even crack the 40s next week.
Temperatures are expected to struggle into the upper 20s and 30s in several counties in the Hudson Valley further North, the National Weather Service said.
The cold weather is part of what the NWS called a cyclonic system that has blanketed large swaths of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes with well-below freezing air and that has caused blowing lake effect snow in the upper Midwest.
From there, the front pushes eastward into the interior Northeast, bringing cold, ice and snow to the eastern seaboard and leaving New York City and other parts of the region in the deep freeze.
