Brrr! It's cold out there today. How long will it last?

Brrrr!

The coldest air of the season is roaring into the central, eastern and southern U.S. this morning, sending temperatures nosediving to mid-winter levels from all the way from the Midwest to Florida.

Although not expected to be record-breaking, it is a shock to our system, as the first cold waves of the season often are, AccuWeather said.

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In all, some 100 million Americans are waking up to the cold blast.

How cold will it be Tuesday?

“Highs Tuesday will be in the 30s and 40s for New England, the mid-Atlantic, and even into the Carolinas, with 50s for the Southeast and Gulf Coast/north Florida,” the National Weather Service said.

“Chilly highs in the 20s and 30s are expected for the Great Lakes/Midwest with 30s and 40s from the central Plains into the middle Mississippi and Ohio Valleys. Highs will be in the 50s for Texas and the lower Mississippi Valley.”

This translates into high temperatures that will be 10 to 20 degrees below average Tuesday across the entire eastern half of the nation, the weather service said.

Pedestrians navigate a snow-covered sidewalk as temperatures hang in the single-digits on Dec. 22, 2022, in Chicago, Illinois. A winter weather system bringing snow, high winds, and sub-zero temperatures has wreaked havoc on a large section of the county in front of the holidays. Strong winds are expected to combine with sub-zero temperatures tomorrow, driving Chicago’s wind chill to around -40 degrees.

Where is the cold coming from? How long will the cold last?

This unusually cold air mass comes to us all the way from northern portions of Canada, AccuWeather reports.

Fortunately for cold-weather-haters, this cold blast is expected to be short-lived: “During the second half of the week, the temperature trend will reverse and recover to near the historical average over much of the eastern third of the nation,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said.

Will there also be snow?

And for snow-lovers, most of you won’t see any snow with this cold blast. However, folks around the Great Lakes are seeing a winter wonderland this morning thanks to a visit from the lake-effect snow machine. As much as two feet of snow was forecast to fall downwind of Lakes Erie and Ontario by the time the snow winds down Wednesday.

‘Difficult to impossible’ travel: 1-2 feet of lake-effect snow to paste Great Lakes region

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brrr! It’s cold out there today. How long will it last?