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

CNN 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 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 to degrees below normal and struggle to reach 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 - to - will be common Des Moines and Cedar Rapids Iowa are each set to break the daily low temperature record on Thursday falling to - degrees and - 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 to 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 degrees while Indianapolis could approach its record of degrees last set in 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 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 In recent months though it weakened and slid southward towards the midlatitudes spilling cold Arctic air into heavily populated areas This can create stormier conditions revealed 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 declared 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 revealed 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 - 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