United States

Make sure to bundle up like this woman if you're going to be out in the cold the next few days! Dressing warmly with layers, taking along extra blankets and minimizing exposed skin will help reduce your risk of frostbite and hypothermia. (AP Photo/Robert Spencer)

Some of the coldest air to blast through the country during the month of November is on the move and will make for a frigid Thanksgiving from California to Texas, Colorado and the Great Lakes.

The bitter arctic air already invaded the Northwest over the past few days, sending temperatures plummeting to record lows in Seattle and many cities across Montana.

Some outstanding new records that have been set include high temperatures of 10° below zero in Cut Bank, Mont., and 8° below zero in Lewistown, Mont., Tuesday. Punishing winds have made it feel even more frigid, with AccuWeather.com RealFeel® temperatures dropping lower than 50° below zero.

In Seattle, temperatures dipped into the teens Tuesday morning and again Tuesday night. It is not that often that Seattle gets this cold, especially in November. In fact, there were only two other times in the last 20 years that temperatures dropped into the teens in Seattle during November.

While the worst is just about over for the Northwest, it is yet to come for areas farther south and east across the country.

In Denver and Flagstaff, temperatures plummeted into the single digits this morning. People farther east across the Plains are also feeling a bitter chill as morning lows dropped to near 20 in Wichita, Kan., Kansas City, Mo., and Amarillo, Texas.

In portions of the mountains and upper deserts of California, lows will be in the teens or even single digits the next couple of nights.

Thanksgiving Day will be the coldest day of the season so far for a host of cities across the middle of the country, including Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Denver.

AccuWeather.com RealFeel® temperatures, which provide a measure of how cold it will feel with the wind factored in, will be below zero across parts of Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota on Thanksgiving.

The worst of the wind and cold will target the Dakotas, where RealFeel® temperatures are projected to range between 20° and 30° below zero.

Thursday night, the cold air will start spilling into the East and become more entrenched across the middle of the country. Minneapolis is expected to record its first single-digit temperature of the season Thursday night. In Chicago, it will be the first time this autumn that temperatures dip into the teens.