Arctic air sticks around through Christmas Eve before temperatures improve

A WIND CHILL WARNING has been issued for the entire viewing area through 1:00PM today, and continues for Brown and Nemaha counties until noon on Saturday.

A WIND CHILL ADVISORY takes the place of the warning for the remainder of the viewing area from 6:00PM this evening until 11:00AM Saturday.

Winds will stay sustained out of the northwest today and tonight with gusts up to 30mph+. However, they do start to relax slowly into the first part of the weekend. This will lead to an eventual improvement in our wind chill values, but it'll still take over 24 hours before we at least feel like we're around the 0° mark.

Today, air temperatures should be able to make it up to around 10° or so, but with those continued breezy conditions, wind chills will be around -30° this morning and improving to around -10° by this afternoon. We should have some sunshine, though. It just won't help us out in the temperature department at all.

Tonight, we're right back to feeling like we're around -20° to -30°, but the cold air finally starts to retreat a little bit for Saturday. High temperatures should make it up to near 20°, and with a bit of a lighter breeze, we could be feeling like we're in the single digits! More sunshine is expected through the weekend, and that will begin to really help us out by Christmas Day.

Santa should feel right at home in Northeast Kansas with our Christmas Eve temperatures, though. We'll drop back into the single digits, and most likely feeling subzero again by Christmas morning for a North Pole-esque experience for the big man.

Finally, by Christmas Day we really begin our warm up. Mostly sunny skies will help us reach near 30°, and by the time we get to the middle of next week, we could be in the low 50s if you can believe it. We're keeping an eye on a quick system that could bring a slim chance at some wintry mix very late Sunday night and into Monday morning.