A fast-moving weather pattern coming in from the Midwest to the Mountain State is about to make your last-minute Christmas shopping cold, slippery and dangerous, even – if you don’t heed the wind chill.
“Everyone’s asking us about the snow,” Shannon Hefferon, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, said Wednesday.
While today’s high of 46 is mild for this time of year, what follows on the other side of the thermometer won’t be, she said.
“We’re really watching the cold and wind with this one,” the meteorologist said. “That’s what people will need to be concerned about.”
That’s because the weather, as she said, is coming in hot – and bringing in the cold with it.
Quick drops in the temperature, coupled with rain showers, she said, makes a perfect recipe for ice.
Rain is expected to move in after midnight, while changing over to snow Friday morning for your commute to work, Hefferon said.
“That’s when the transition begins,” she said.
“We’re going to go from around 40 degrees to the 20s in a matter of hours, and going to make for a fast-freeze.”
Brief periods of snow squalls could also make for tough driving Friday morning, the meteorologist added, with temperatures doing a steady plummet to just 2 degrees above zero that night.
The day before Christmas won’t be any better with its projected high of 14 and low of 6.
Gusting winds will make it seem colder, and Hefferon and her colleagues are already following suit.
All of north-central West Virginia and portions of western and southwestern Pennsylvania are a wind chill watch through Saturday afternoon.
Those expected wind gusts of 40-50 mph can make it feel 40 below, the meteorologist said, which is frostbite and hypothermia material, if nothing else.
Gov. Jim Justice earlier this week declared a “State of Preparedness” for all 55 counties in anticipation of the weather.
Speaking at Wednesday’s meeting of the Monongalia County Commission, MECCA 911 director Jim Smith told residents to be ready.
A white Christmas, Smith said, isn’t being considered by this weather pattern and its 1-to-2-inch projected snow totals.
“The snow event is not going to be a large event,” he told commissioners.
“The greatest concern with this will be that flash freeze over ice,” he said. “I want the commission to be aware and I want the public to be aware.”
A warm-up is expected the day after Christmas, Hefferon said, but that’s then.
“This is unprecedented, because we’re used to seeing this kind of weather, with its low-pressure system and arctic air, in the Midwest,” she said.
“It’s the kind of cold you have to worry about. And of course, it’s happening during the holidays.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
