Keep your winter weather gear close at hand this week….a blast of arctic air is causing temperatures to drop to lows not seen in some areas in several years.

Temperatures will remain below freezing twenty hour hours a day through the rest of the week; it will be the coldest period of this winter so far.  Warm air over the North Pole caused by a shift in the jet stream is pushing the arctic air south. David Robinson, state climatologist at Rutgers, says it has been some years since we have experienced temperatures like this.

“We’ve not had four or five consecutive days with the thermometer staying below freezing twenty four hours a day, in Newark, since 2007, January 2007 we had five consecutive sub freezing days.”

Robinson says despite this week’s cold temperatures we have had a mild winter with temperatures consistently 6 degrees above average.