Snow forecast for Northern Plains and potential record cold in the South

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Snow forecast for Northern Plains and potential record cold in the South

2025-11-08 09:47 Last Updated At：10:00

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Some of the first wintry weather of the season is on the way for much of the U.S. in the coming days, including potentially record low temperatures for parts of the South and snow in the Northern Plains.

“Seems like a shot across the bow,” said Judah Cohen, a research scientist at MIT.

The Dakotas and parts of southern Minnesota have the highest potential for snowfall late Friday through Saturday morning, including some areas that could see as much as 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 centimeters) of snow, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Temperatures from the 60s to the 80s (15 to 27 Celsius) on Friday across much of the central U.S. are expected to plummet as a front spreads from the Northern Plains to the South through the weekend. Highs will likely stay in the 30s in parts of Nebraska, Iowa and northern Missouri by Sunday, and the chilly temperatures are expected to spread into Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas, Cook said.

"It’s a little bit unusual to have this strong of a cold push this early in the season,” Cook said.

On Monday, temperatures in the 30s and 40s are forecast to move from the Ohio Valley to the southern U.S., where the cold air could produce daily record lows on Tuesday of 24 in Knoxville, Tennessee; 26 in Birmingham, Alabama; 32 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and 40 near Orlando, Florida, Cook said.

In the South, organizers of festivals held outdoors in November during the region’s typically mild climate are bracing for the unusually bitter cold that seems ahead of schedule for this time of year.

At this weekend’s Molena Bigfoot Fest in the small town of Molena, Georgia, organizers hope the cold weather will be as elusive as the legendary beast — and the temperature doesn’t dip until after the festival concludes Saturday evening.

The animal shows, music performances and most activities will be held outside on Saturday, said Alla Drake, an assistant city clerk who helps out with the festival.

Planning for the Bigfoot festival has been going on all year, so hopes are high for warm weather and no rain, Molena City Clerk Tina Lee said. It celebrates the evidence collected by Pike County Sheriff’s Deputy James Akin, who was called repeatedly to strange events near Elkins Creek in the 1990s. He made plaster casts of an enormous footprint famous for its level of detail.

Warmer temperatures should spread through the South beginning Wednesday.

At the Roosevelt Park Zoo in Minot, North Dakota, where up to 3 inches (8 centimeters) of snow is forecast Friday night, the staff has begun typical preparations for the cold, General Curator Chelsea Mihalick said. African animals, including a giraffe calf born Sunday, are already inside heated buildings, and maintenance workers make sure heaters are working properly.

“We've gotten pretty lucky as far as we haven't gotten anything yet, or the cold weather just now has come,” Mihalick said.

Some animals, such as tigers, love the snow. Cubs were born at the zoo in May.

“This will be their first snowfall, so it will be fun to see them running around in the snow,” Mihalick said.

The expected cold spell won't last, though, as warmer temperatures are forecast for much of the central U.S. starting Wednesday and Thursday, Cook said.

“This is a brief cold snap. It won't stay around very long,” he said.

AP writer Jeff Martin contributed from Atlanta.

Ailing astronaut returns to Earth early in NASA's first medical evacuation

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — An ailing astronaut returned to Earth with three others on Thursday, ending their space station mission more than a month early in NASA’s first medical evacuation.

SpaceX guided the capsule to a middle-of-the-night splashdown in the Pacific near San Diego, less than 11 hours after the astronauts exited the International Space Station.

“It’s so good to be home,” said NASA astronaut Zena Cardman, the capsule commander.

It was an unexpected finish to a mission that began in August and left the orbiting lab with only one American and two Russians on board. NASA and SpaceX said they would try to move up the launch of a fresh crew of four; liftoff is currently targeted for mid-February.

Cardman and NASA’s Mike Fincke were joined on the return by Japan’s Kimiya Yui and Russia’s Oleg Platonov. Officials have refused to identify the astronaut who had the health problem or explain what happened, citing medical privacy.

While the astronaut was stable in orbit, NASA wanted them back on Earth as soon as possible to receive proper care and diagnostic testing. The entry and splashdown required no special changes or accommodations, officials said, and the recovery ship had its usual allotment of medical experts on board. It was not immediately known when the astronauts would fly from California to their home base in Houston. Platonov’s return to Moscow was also unclear.

NASA stressed repeatedly over the past week that this was not an emergency. The astronaut fell sick or was injured on Jan. 7, prompting NASA to call off the next day’s spacewalk by Cardman and Fincke, and ultimately resulting in the early return. It was the first time NASA cut short a spaceflight for medical reasons. The Russians had done so decades ago.

The space station has gotten by with three astronauts before, sometimes even with just two. NASA said it will be unable to perform a spacewalk, even for an emergency, until the arrival of the next crew, which has two Americans, one French and one Russian astronaut.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.