Polar air will march south this weekend, bring freezing temperatures as south as Orlando! Tampa is also forecasting morning lows in the 30s, and Miami and bracing for morning lows in the upper 30s to low 40s for Christmas morning.

Here in Metro Atlanta, we can expect temperatures to remain below freezing for as long as 48 to 72 hours, beginning Friday morning through Monday afternoon.

This is unusually cold, but is it record breaking cold?

Not quite, but it is close!

My forecast morning low for Sunday, Dec 25 2022 is 16 degrees. My forecast afternoon high for Sunday, Dec 25 2022 is 30 degrees.

Averaging the two numbers together yields an average temperature of 23 degrees for Christmas Day 2022.

This would place Christmas 2022 as the second coldest on record for Atlanta.

That data is interesting, but I prefer to compare morning lows and afternoon highs to previous years. So let’s take a look at the data!

My forecast morning low for Sunday, Dec 25 2022 is 16 degrees. If this verifies, it would tie for the third coldest Christmas morning in Atlanta’s record.

My forecast afternoon high for Sunday, Dec 25 2022 is 30 degrees. If this verifies, it would be the second coldest Christmas afternoon on record.

Is there a pattern to this record cold?

Christmas 2022 will be the coldest in Metro Atlanta since January 1 and 2, 2018, when morning lows dipped into the teens.

And I noticed that Christmas 1983 was the coldest on record overall for Atlanta.

Let’s take a look at the surface maps for these three time periods.

Christmas 2022: Arctic High Pressure (1036 mbar) over the Southern Plains

January 2018: Arctic High Pressure (1040 mbar) over the Midwest

Christmas 1983: Arctic High Pressure (1044 mbar) over the Great Plains

High pressure is associated with cold, dense air in the winter time, and these areas of high pressure pushed the Arctic airmass as far south as Georgia and Florida.

Share Your Christmas Temperature Reports with Me!

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Twitter: @ChristinaWSBwx

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