Hang on to Your Hats, and Grab Your Winter Coats!

A weather system is crossing southern Minnesota this evening. It will move toward the northeast, and intensify overnight, pulling a cold front across the area later tonight. There could be some rain and snow showers starting about midnight. Precipitation will change to all snow later tonight as colder air moves into the Stateline. Accumulations will not be much, but may total round 1" across northern Illinois by daybreak. With the storm system intensifying as it moves across Wisconsin tonight, a Wind Advisory has been issued for north central Illinois starting at 3 am Sunday, and lasting until midnight Sunday night.  Winds will be southwesterly and switch to the west  at 15-30 mph tonight with gusts to 35 mph. On New Year's day the winds will be westerly at 25-35 mph with gusts to 50 mph. It will be cloudy with some snow showers or flurries. No additional accumulation is expected.  The wind chill is expected to be near zero by Sunday evening, be in the -5 to 5+ range overnight, right through the day on Monday.  The winds Sunday night will be 20-30 mph with gusts to 40 mph, and on Monday the wind diminish a little, but still be quite strong from the northwest 15-30 mph with more gusts to 40 mph. On Monday it will be partly cloudy with high only around 20 degrees, and the overnight low on Monday night will drop to around 8 degrees.  If that occurs, it will be the coldest temperature so far this winter season.  Tuesday will be mostly sunny, but cold, with a high in the low 20's.  The cold air will retreat off to the east on Wednesday, and temperatures will recover very nicely to the low to middle 30's.  That's back above normal again.  The warming trend will continue for the rest of the work week.  There will be a good amount of sunshine with temperatures up near 40 on Thursday and into the middle 40's on Friday.