West Virginia is in for a blast of winter weather.
“It is going to be cold, very cold,” National Weather Service Meteorologist John Victory says of this week’s forecast.
“Winter has finally arrived in a pretty cold fashion. We’re going to be in the grips of winter for the foreseeable future.”
The National Weather Service has issued a Wind Chill Advisory for the following counties starting late on Monday night and continuing into Tuesday:
Hancock, Brooke, Ohio, Marshall, Wetzel, Marion, Monongalia, Webster, Pocahontas, Randolph, Preston, Tucker, Hardy, Grant, Mineral, Pendleton, Mercer, Summers, Monroe, Greenbrier
Forecasters say temperatures could fall below zero in some areas, possibly dropping down to -25 degrees, with the wind, in the highest elevations.
However, even though Monday night will be cold, Victory says Tuesday night will probably be the coldest night of the week across West Virginia.
“We’ll be, in the lowlands, Charleston, Huntington, Parkersburg, probably five to ten degrees with just a little bit of a breeze, so it’ll feel just a little bit colder,” Victory said.
“It’ll warm up just a little bit towards Thursday where it might get up into the low to mid 30s, but we’ve got a storm system moving through, so we may have a wintry mess there and then back into the Arctic freeze for next weekend.”
Victory says the cold comes after some mild weather in the Mountain State.
“I think people have gotten used to the snowless and not too bad temperatures of January,” he said on Monday’s MetroNews Talkline.