Cold continues; some snow chances too

If you didn't know any better, you might think we just skipped Thanksgiving and Christmas and went straight to January with the way it feels outside this morning (and will feel throughout the day) Wow! It's just as cold here as it is in Barrow, Alaska (temperature 18 with a wind chill of 8) and Anchorage is 33 with a wind chill of 28.

The cold weather is not going to move much through the rest of the week. Maybe the best news to offer up on this cold day is that the wind should back down by late this afternoon and the rest of the week should not have as much wind (most likely under 20 mph for the remainder of the week)

Possible record lows early Thursday. Here are the numbers to tie or beat

If we are going to have a morning with record lows, it should be Thursday morning with clearing skies. Lows could fall below zero in northwest Kansas and single digits are possible elsewhere. I'm posting the record lows for Wednesday and Thursday so you can watch and see over the next few mornings how close we get. This is so unusual for November, but it's not the first cold outbreak this month has seen.

Jet stream continues to setup farther south, which will keep us below normal into the start of next week.

The weather pattern looks to remain active and rather chilly. The main branch of the jet stream will continue to push colder than average weather down across the central and northern US through early next week. There are a couple of systems that will impact the weather heading into the weekend. It doesn't look like they will be anything more than just some light snow chances, and unlikely it will be enough to cause any travel delays or slick conditions. Yesterday, I posted a model forecast for snow over the weekend, highlighting some areas that could get 4 inches or so. The model has trended a little lower with the amounts today, but that's what we were expecting anyway. Still looks like the snow may begin in western Kansas early Saturday, and then move east into the afternoon. It's all going to be very light with an inch or so possible by Sunday morning.

Weekend snowfall potential - mainly Saturday and Saturday night

We will have another system coming through next week that could bring some moisture back to the central Plains. It could be a rain changing to snow scenario by Tuesday night/Wednesday, so will be keeping a close watch on the trends as that systems comes into better view.

In the meantime, stay warm. We could see some 40 to 50 degree weather back in Kansas by Monday of next week.