Stay warm! Arctic cold front brings strong wind and bitter cold

Some areas could have “feels like” temperatures 30-below zero Friday night into Saturday morning

ROANOKE, Va. – The very strong cold front we’ve been talking about all week will pass through the area today. It’s bringing strong wind and bitter cold as many of you are finalizing your preparations for Christmas weekend.

It’s also bringing some snow showers first thing this morning! Unfortunately, we don’t expect accumulations to be all that impressive.

Here’s a projection from the European (ECMWF) model.

Future tracker - Snowfall (ECMWF) (Copyright 2022 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.)

Once the snow stops, the temperatures will RAPIDLY fall. We’ll be in the 20s in the morning, the teens midday and afternoon, then the single digits this evening and tonight. Brrrrr!

Hourly temperature planner - Friday (Copyright 2022 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.)

In addition to the bitter cold, we have strong west winds to deal with today! Any stronger gusts will make it feel MUCH colder than the actual air temperatures.

Many of us are under a wind advisory until this evening, due to potential gusts up to 50 miles per hour. I think we’re likely to stay windy through tonight into Saturday morning.

Sustained winds vs. wind gusts (Copyright 2022 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.)

We’re still breezy on Christmas Eve and the temperatures will stay very cold.

In fact, we believe it will be one of the coldest Christmas Eves on record! The previous coldest high recorded on Christmas Eve in Roanoke? 26 degrees in 1960.

Christmas Eve high temperatures (Copyright 2022 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.)

We’ll get a little bit of improvement with the temperatures and winds on Christmas Day.

I expect many areas to reach the 20s and 30s for highs on Sunday. The *slightly* warmer air will be accompanied by wall-to-wall sunshine!

Christmas Day planner (Copyright 2022 by WSLS 10 - All rights reserved.)

We are likely to thaw out even more during the final week of 2022! High temperatures could be back into the 40s and 50s at times.