Cold... And Then Warmth?

That's right... right about now you might be looking outside your window at the sky, wondering if it could possibly be as cold as your thermometer is telling you. I'm sorry to say, but your thermometer is right. We're going to be seeing temperatures overnight near 20 to 30 degrees below zero!

There is good news in the future - kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak... we have some temperatures in the 30s in the forecast even as soon as this weekend. The additional good news? Well, we're not really ready to talk about this on-air quite yet, but the long range computer models are suggesting a significant warm-up for this coming week. That could end up being our "true" January thaw.

This is an image below that is one of my favorites in weather - it takes all the numbers from the computer models and makes them into a graphical format. It might look confusing at first, but look for about 30 seconds or so and it should make at least a little sense. We'll explain more why we're showing this following this image:

Look at that bottom frame - the one with the shades of blue. That is the surface temperature indicator. This particular model is indicating some warmth coming in, and that trend seems to be strengthening.

Look at this more focused view:

We're looking for some nice temperatures next week - at least for this time of year, and at least as compared to what we're going to be looking at tonight. So, with that - fire up your fireplace, brew some hot chocolate and tea, and have a great night!

~KDLT Meteorologist Aaron Shaffer