Extreme cold warning has begun!
The arctic front has arrived! Winds are up between 10 and 20 mph and are gusting around 30 mph. That wind is a real problem creating dangerous wind chills across the area.
The largest drop in temperature will occur between 10 pm and 6 am. Winds out of the northwest between 10 and 20 mph will make the wind chill drop between -30 to -40!
Frostbite can occur within 10 minutes. Please limit your time outdoors. Wind chills throughout Friday will feel like -20 to -30. The extreme cold warning will be replaced at 1 pm by an extreme cold weather advisory.
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1:15pm Update: The Extreme Cold headlines remain intact. If you're curious how rare this type of cold is I did a little digging into sub-zero days for Milwaukee, and this is for air temperatures. Have a look:
We have 154 years of records so you can see nearly a third of our years have had at least one day staying below zero, but this is still scarce to see cold to this level. It's been about six years since we've tracked air temperatures this cold and it's been about a year since we've had An Extreme Cold Warning issued. By the way this is a relatively new name for what used to be called Wind Chill Warning. But the criteria is about the same. Be that as it may, please take this situation serious as frostbite can develop in less than ten minutes on exposed skin when temps drop to this level.
Morning Update: Dangerous cold is on the way. An Extreme Cold Warning has been issued for all of southeast Wisconsin from midnight Thursday night through 1 PM on Friday. Another Extreme Cold Warning might be issued for Friday afternoon through Saturday morning or if wind chills look a little warmer then a Cold Weather Advisory could be issued.
This is the first Extreme Cold Warning in a year in Milwaukee since a round of cold air right around this time last year. Highs on Thursday will stay in the teens. The official "high" for Friday might go down as the temp right at midnight which would be around 0 but the afternoon highs on Friday will stay below-zero. Saturday the high temp gets above-zero then we see a bit of a better chance for teens to return by the beginning of next week.
Part of the reason the wind chills will be so dangerous is how strong the wind will be Thursday, Thursday night and Friday. Expects gusts over those 48 hours to range from 15-35 mph. Then on Saturday the wind speed becomes lighter from 5-15 mph which will have an impact on wind chills.
Even though they aren't labeled as "dangerous", wind chills on Thursday will still be cold to -10 in the morning and not much better than 0 in the afternoon. Wind chills will be at their most extreme level Friday morning when they could drop to -40 and doesn't get much better than -25 during the day.
Saturday morning should be slightly better with the lighter wind and wind chills to -30 in the morning but staying below-zero all day. We probably don't see wind chills get above-zero until Sunday afternoon.
Download the CBS 58 Weather app to track the dangerous cold.