cold snap
A short period of cold temperatures. It was finally beginning to get warm outside when we were hit with a cold snap that damaged my newly blossoming tulips. Workers spent the night soaking the runways with deicer so that flights wouldn't be delayed due to the severe cold snap. Great, all the strawberries are dead on the vine, thanks to that unprecedented cold snap.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.
cold snap
Also, cold spell. A short period of unusually cold weather, as in The recent cold snap has threatened the crop. The first expression presumably likens snap in the sense of "a sudden bite or cut" to sudden unexpected cold. The variant is more obvious, spell having been used in the sense of "a bout or turn at something" since the early 1700s. [Early 1800s]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.