New year likely to bring frigid temperatures to Albany area

ALBANY — Button up that overcoat. It’s going to be wet and cold as the work week wraps up. But it could get downright frigid shortly after 2018 arrives.

The early forecast for next week says temperatures in the area could plummet to the low 20s on Tuesday morning.

But before that arrives — if it does — the metro Albany area and Southwest Georgia are in for some rain and cold weather in the last week of the year. The forecast, however, calls for any mixed precipitation to be north or east of the Albany area.

“It looks like most of that is going to be at points north and east of Albany,” meteorologist Blair Scholl with the National Weather Service office in Tallahassee, which covers the Southwest Georgia area, said Tuesday. “It’s mainly rain, possibly mixed with freezing rain, that we have in the forecast.

“The threat’s low and the uncertainty’s high. But freezing rain could possibly mix in with the rain as we start going into Thursday night.”

It’s unlikely that the rain and arrival of the Arctic cold front will lead to road problems, with the forecast calling for the temperature to be around 36 Thursday and around 33 at daybreak Friday. “I don’t think the cold air’s going to be in there quick enough to present a lot of problems,” Scholl said. “Even then, the precip’s ending and heading out of the area.”

Still, the forecast could change.

“The uncertainty’s too high to fine-tune (now),” he said.

But for those who’ve missed winter, it may get here early in the new year.

“We may get one (cold front) next week that’s a lot colder than what we’re getting this time around,” Scholl said. “We’re talking Tuesday morning with lows in the low 20s, but, again, that is very high uncertainty. The models aren’t agreeing on that. Let’s get a couple of more days from now and see what the temperatures are looking like.”

The early forecast also calls for that front to come through with little if any moisture, he said.

Tuesday’s NWS forecast for the next few days for Albany calls for 60 percent chances of rain Wednesday, with a high of 48, and Thursday, with a high of 43. Friday’s chances of freezing rain will end by 7 a.m. with a high that day of 51. Overnight lows are expected to be 40 Wednesday, and 33 Thursday and Friday.

For New Year’s weekend, the forecast calls for a high Saturday of 56; low Saturday night, 35; high Sunday, 52 with small chance of rain; low 34 Sunday night with a 40 percent chance of rain; high New Year’s Day of 47, and a low Monday of 27.