Normally quiet and reserved WeatherBell senior forecaster Joe D'Aleo (co-founder of the Weather Channel with John Coleman) almost never writes (email subject lines) like this. When he does, it gets my attention. A new forecast shows the cold blast in the eastern half of the USA extending well past Groundhog Day, Feb 2nd, according to their models. WeatherBell has had an excellent track record this winter so far. He says he hasn't seen anything like it since 1918 when the big flu pandemic hit the USA. Have a look:

D'Aleo writes in a follow up email about the forecast graphic below.
This is the GFS model depiction of the mean anomaly (in degrees C) for the 16 day period through 12z on February 6th. It covers the coldest period of the winter season climatologically in most areas. The other global models agree through at least 10 days. This is the most severe run thus far. We have been alerting clients to it for weeks. Here is the day by day anomaly for the mean of the GFS ensemble runs which agree on the steadiness and generally the severity of the cold.
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The mainstream media blames it on global warming of course.UCAR downplayed the last brutal cold as being brief unlike the cold of the 1970s and 1980s.
Lets revisit their insightful analysis after the next few weeks.

1917/18 and 1993/94 were winters Joe Bastardi and I have been looking at. See the similarity of the SSTA in the Pacific in Jan/Feb 1918 to this year.

January 1918:
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January 2014:
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That warm pool in the Gulf of Alaska drives the persistent Alaska and western ridge and downstream cold vortex. That year had an extremely cold January.
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Powerful stuff. Readers may recall that 1918 saw the great flu pandemic in the USA.

Meanwhile, weather, not climate, is hitting the US government hard:

Federal Government Shuts Down for Snow Storm Offices in Washington, D.C., are closed for the second time this winter.

Snow falling in Washington area; 4 to 7 inches expected, as flights canceled across US