Breakfast brief: Frigid start

The new work week is going to be a cold one for many parts of the northern tier. There will be some snowy headaches across the Great Lakes while showers dampen the Gulf Coast and Florida. The Breakfast Brief is published daily, Monday through Friday, at 5:00 a.m. Eastern time.

The northern U.S. remains active with not one, but two clipper systems rolling through. The WeatherRadar shows the bigger of the two sweeping across the Great Lakes and into the Northeast. A dusting to an inch or two of snow will be possible from this fast-moving system.

The second clipper will slide south out of Canada. The northern Rockies and western high Plains will contend with a quick burst of 1 or 2 inches of crunchy snow.

These two systems are moving through a bitterly cold, Arctic airmass. The deep blues and purples on the TemperatureRadar show where below-zero temperatures are settling into the Dakotas and even Minnesota.

This cold air mass has also settled across the Rockies, central and southern Plains, Middle Mississippi Valley, Great Lakes and the Northeast. Sub-freezing highs will be the norm. Even the South and Southeast will struggle to make it out of the 30s and into the low 40s.

The warmest spots will be in Florida, where highs in the 60s and 70s will be common. However, a system moving out of the Gulf of Mexico, as seen on the WeatherRadar will bring a few showers to the Gulf Coast and Florida.

The West will have a quiet start to the week. No rain is on the horizon with highs in the 50s and 60s along the coast and throughout the Desert Southwest with the Cascades and Sierras and Great Basin being in the 30s and 40s.

We're in the peak season for winter storms. Make sure your winter weather alerts are turned on!