Record-breaking cold settles in across the southern US, but another big change is coming

By CNN Meteorologists Briana Waxman, Chris Dolce

(CNN) — Record cold temperatures have pushed as far south as Florida this morning as wind-whipped snow continues to pile up in the eastern Great Lakes from a brief bout of Arctic air gripping the eastern US.

More than two dozen cities, reaching as far south as Fort Myers and Naples, Florida, toppled or tied daily record lows for November 11.

This morning is the coldest so early in the fall since 1976 in Jacksonville, Florida, and Savannah, Georgia, with both locations dropping to a shivering 28 degrees. Even Miami flirted with a record low, coming up one degree short at 49 degrees.

The cold is causing South Florida’s cold-blooded iguanas to “freeze,” or lose muscle control. They can sometimes fall out of trees as a result, which some Floridians saw Tuesday morning. The iguanas are not dead, but rather in a paralyzed state and can revive if temperatures warm up fast enough.

Cold conditions farther north have kicked the lake-effect snow machine into gear across the Great Lakes for the first time this year. Snow will contribute to dangerous travel conditions on Tuesday in the snow belts of northeast Ohio, northwest Pennsylvania and western New York.

The heaviest snow has come to an end in the western Great Lakes. Up to a foot of snow fell more than 50 miles south of Chicago, and totals north of the city from far northeast Illinois into southeast Wisconsin topped 10 inches. Dangerous travel conditions from snow and strong winds were reported early Monday along Interstate 57 south of Chicago in Kankakee and northern Iroquois counties in Illinois, the National Weather Service said.

Chicago only picked up 1 to 3 inches of snow, which was accompanied by thunder and strong winds Sunday night into early Monday. Forecasts for the city on Sunday called for potentially historic November snow totals over 10 inches, but the heaviest bands of snow spared the downtown area from those kinds of totals.

Lake-effect snow totals often swing wildly from location to location depending on where heavier bands develop because of how narrow they are. That’s what happened Monday near Lake Michigan.

Elsewhere, over a foot of snow fell in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and northwest Indiana from Sunday into Monday.

Several inches of snow have also piled up in the Appalachians from West Virginia to the border between North Carolina and Tennessee since Monday. Knoxville, Tennessee, saw its earliest accumulating snow since 1996 on Monday, according to the National Weather Service. Snowflakes have flown through the air as far south as the Atlanta metro area on Monday, and along the North Carolina coast in Wilmington on Tuesday morning.

A temperature turnaround is ahead

The good news: This cold snap won’t stick around long.

Temperatures across the central and southern US will rebound quickly in the second half of this week as Arctic air releases its grip and warmer winds from out of the south return. Highs will be as much as 10 to 25 degrees above average from the Plains into the Midwest by Friday and Saturday.

A few cities in the Midwest that just saw their first snowflakes of the season could flirt with daily record high temperatures on Saturday. That includes Dubuque, Iowa, and Rockford, Illinois, where thermometers are predicted to climb to near 70 degrees as the weekend begins.

Parts of the South will also return to shorts and T-shirt weather in the coming days.

Highs in the lower 70s return to Nashville, Tennessee, by Friday, which is about 10 degrees above average. Much of the Florida Peninsula will see thermometers reach the upper 70s and lower 80s heading into the weekend.

But not everyone in the East will feel this warmup. Temperatures in much of the Northeast are predicted to remain stubbornly cooler than average through the end of the week.

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CNN’s Sara Smart and CNN Meteorologists Mary Gilbert and Brandon Miller contributed to this report.