A blast of Arctic cold air is descending on a large span of the country this weekend, and Wisconsin residents can expect bitterly cold temperatures to linger into the middle of January.
The National Weather Service is forecasting the coldest air of the season.
Nathan Lynum, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Duluth, said that’s being driven by cold air bottled up in Canada that’s funneling through the Northern Plains into Wisconsin and much of the nation.
“The coldest air mass is definitely over the far north central part of the U.S., and obviously including our portion of the Northland here,” Lynum said. “We’re going to be looking at this really impacting states even further to the south, down into the lower Midwest, into the Appalachian region and over into the kind of interior northeast region as well.”
Temperatures are slated to drop 5 to 15 degrees below zero across northern Wisconsin with wind chills of 10 to 20 below on Friday night. Low temperatures are expected to be 10 to 15 degrees below normal across the region this weekend.