By JUDSON JONES NYTimes News Service
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The coldest air of the season so far will settle across the United States this weekend, producing a blanket of snow in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Sunday, and bringing below-freezing temperatures with dangerously blustery winds to most of the country.

Facing what was likely to be one of the coldest inaugurations in decades, President-elect Donald Trump on Friday said he would move Monday’s swearing-in ceremony indoors.

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“The cold air is coming directly from the Arctic and will surge south through Canada and into the U.S. over the weekend and into early next week,” said Alex Lamers, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center.

Chilly temperatures in January are not unusual, but these conditions are likely to be abnormally cold. The cold will settle across the country starting in the Upper Midwest on Saturday, plunging temperatures by more than 30 to 40 degrees from earlier this week, before moving toward the southern and eastern coasts Sunday.

As the cold air trudges across the country, a storm system off the East Coast could combine to bring a burst of wintry weather Sunday. There is a moderate likelihood of 3 to 6 inches of snow falling from Washington through New York City and up to Boston.

Blustery winds will remove body heat, making you feel even colder if you’re outside. The Rockies, northern Plains and Upper Midwest could see wind chill temperatures drop to 30 to 50 degrees below zero at times Saturday into Tuesday. A chill that cold poses a heightened risk of hypothermia and frostbite to exposed skin, forecasters warned.

By Monday, just about every state will be experiencing temperatures colder than average for this time of year.

Daytime highs Monday are likely to be 20 to 40 degrees below average from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians. It will be so cold, Lamers said, that “if you count the summits of the volcanoes in Hawaii, at least a part of every state should be below freezing Monday morning.” More than 250 million people across the United States are likely to feel freezing conditions at some point in the next week, he said.

It will probably be the coldest air of the season for many areas. In Chicago, the current weather service forecast calls for wind chills of 20 below zero Monday. (That’s cold but about normal for the city, where O’Hare International Airport has recorded such a low in 32 of the past 40 winters.)

It appears the cold will most likely peak Monday and Monday night in terms of the total area affected and the intensity of the cold over the central and northern United States. Any time an Arctic air mass like this one dips all the way to the Gulf Coast, forecasters watch it closely because it increases the potential of rare winter precipitation across the South. It was too early to tell for certain, but there is at least some possibility of snow or ice in the South next week.

By Thursday, the temperatures will still be chilly but are expected to warm up to something closer to normal. Overall through the end of next week, some regions may still experience below-normal temperatures, but it shouldn’t be as frigid as Monday into Tuesday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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