A punishing winter that has already produced record snowfalls and crippling temperatures in many areas sent another wave of severe weather blasting across the country over the weekend. Fresh snow buried cars and snarled travel from Denver to St. Louis, and behind the snow came a mass of air so frigid that the National Weather Service declared a wide area of the north central United States to be entering another deep freeze.
The intense cold was expected to spread into the Mid-Atlantic states and the Northeast through Monday, and to stretch into parts of the Deep South by midweek.
Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with Weathermodels.com, said much of the country should prepare for an “all-week cold snap.”
On Sunday, the Weather Service also warned that it was expecting severe thunderstorms across the Southeast, with potentially damaging winds, strong tornadoes and flash flooding.
The nation may not be unified about much else at the moment, but there seemed to be general agreement about the start that March is getting off to.
“I hate this,” said Abie Olivas, 78, a retired Navy barber in Denver, who spent Sunday morning shoveling his neighbor’s walkway for the fourth or fifth time this season.
“I’m ready for spring, let’s put it that way,” he said as snow fell on his silver pompadour and leather jacket. “I’m ready to go fishing.”
The snow fell mainly in a broad stripe through the middle of the country, with temperatures in at least a dozen states plunging more than 30 degrees below normal. As much as 2 feet of fresh snow fell in the Rocky Mountains, and the deep cold stretched as far south as Texas.
Maue said the frigid air had come mostly from Western Canada, where pools of Arctic air had been stuck for weeks. The cold air mass made its way down the West Coast and then eastward over the spine of the Rocky Mountains to the nation’s midsection.
Maue said he understood that many people were experiencing “spring fever angst,” but that they should remember, “it’s still winter.”
The March mess follows a February full of record-breaking cold and snow in Idaho, Montana, South Dakota and other states. Rapid City, South Dakota, recorded subzero temperatures on 20 of the month’s 28 days. The Twin Cities in Minnesota received 39 inches of snow, beating a normal February by more than 2 feet. As much as 26 feet fell in parts of the Sierra Nevada in California, and people there started calling the month “Februburied.”
Patti Tritschler, 57, was among the air passengers arriving back in Chicago from warmer climes Sunday, only to find the temperature dropping again. “Honestly, we haven’t recovered since the polar vortex,” Tritschler said. “It’s just gone on and on and on.”
Faced with having to slog through still more of an already exhausting winter, some tried to wring a wry smile from the weather on social media.
“Yay, more snow! Said no one EVER!” the Missouri State Highway Patrol posted on Twitter.
In Wyoming, Minnesota, where it takes a lot of snow to faze people, the Police Department shared a wanted poster for Mother Nature, faulting her “for a season of general nastiness.”
The Nebraska State Patrol tried to take it as a test of character. “It’s snowing … Good,” the department wrote on Twitter. “Another chance to get stronger scooping it. Bitter cold? Good. It will make us tougher.”
And in Dodge City, Kansas, where heavy snow and subzero wind chill were forecast, the local National Weather Service office started an informal Twitter poll, asking whether the lengthy winter was welcome or annoying.
The early responses weighed heavily against the snow.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.