7:00 AM | ****Weekend accumulating snow, painful cold, dangerous sub-zero wind chills with potential damaging wind gusts past 55 mph or so****

6-Day DC Forecast

Today

Mostly sunny, windy, very cold, highs in the mid 20’s with sub-zero wind chills

Tonight

Partly cloudy, winds die down rapidly to calm conditions, very cold, lows in the middle teens

Saturday

Thickening clouds, becoming windy, cold, but not nearly as bitter as today, snow developing during the afternoon hours, mid 30’s

Saturday Night

Occasional snow, becoming extremely windy late, total snow accumulations of a coating to two inches by late night, brutally cold by morning with single digit lows

Sunday

The coldest day of the year so far…painfully cold, extremely windy with dangerous sub-zero wind chills and potential damaging wind gusts past 55 mph or so, highs struggle to reach the middle teens

Monday

A bitter cold start not far from 0 degrees, mostly sunny skies, breezy, still very cold during the afternoon hours with highs struggling to reach the middle 20's

Tuesday

Becoming cloudy, quite cold, snow possible late in the day or at night, mid 30’s

Wednesday

Snow possible early; otherwise, partly sunny, windy, cold, near 30 degrees

Discussion

Arctic air has arrived and today promises to be a brutally cold day despite plenty of sunshine along with sub-zero wind chills as winds remain quite strong through much of the day. The winds will relax rapidly this evening, but before this Arctic air mass even has a chance to modify, another one will be fast-approaching as we begin the weekend. By late tomorrow, a clipper system and its associated Arctic front will be dropping southeastward across the Great Lakes region right towards the I-95 corridor. Snow will break out in the afternoon hours and continue at night with a coating to two inches likely by early Sunday.

This clipper low pressure system will explode off the Mid-Atlantic coastline late tomorrow and tomorrow night once it passes over the relatively warm waters of the western Atlantic Ocean. This explosive development will lead to a tremendously sharp pressure gradient which will lead to extreme wind gusts around here by late Saturday night and early Sunday on the order of 55 mph or higher. The last thing we need on Sunday - the coldest day of the year so far - is for power outages to develop, but that is definitely on the table for this event so prepare as well as possible. The cold on Sunday will be downright painful and the high winds will cause dangerously low sub-zero wind chill values. This rapidly intensifying storm will produce significant snow once again for New England, and in some ways it will actually be nastier than recent record-setting storms because of the extreme cold and wind that is expected.

Single digits are likely for lows around here on Sunday morning, highs will struggle on Sunday afternoon to even reach the middle teens, and then overnight low temperatures by early Monday morning should drop to near 0 degrees. Another accumulating snow threat will come late Tuesday into Wednesday, but that storm track is still uncertain and it could still end up not being a big problem around here. However, what is certain is that more brutal cold will follow by the middle and latter part of next week - perhaps even on the levels with this Sunday's extreme cold. And for some good news...pitchers and catchers report in just 6 days.

Video

httpv://youtu.be/OQtfYgMWr3I