Arctic Air is coming! – Boston News, Weather, Sports

The days are getting longer, but winter is still here and Mother Nature will remind us of it at the end of the week! Speaking of days getting longer, today was our first sunrise before 7am in Boston! And in just three days we have our first sunset at 5pm!

And as we ring in our first sunset at 5pm on Friday, we’re also bringing in the coldest air of the season. In fact, it may be our coldest air in years, probably since February 2016. Of course, the coldest air in years would be a shock in itself, but what will add salt to the wound is that we are coming off a peak 3 warmest January on record for the city of Boston. January was one of those months where “average” temperatures felt cold, making below average temperatures feel even worse!

The cold air that is here at the end of the week is currently solidifying its cold properties in the Arctic Ocean. The black line you see on the map below is the trail of our cold air mass as we progress over the next few days. The core of the cold will move out of the Arctic Ocean, sitting a little over Hudson Bay and the Northwest Passages before plunging south into New England.

The good news is that while the incoming cold will be brutal, it will be short-lived. As fast as the arctic blast moves in, she’ll be thrown out again on Sunday afternoon. Temperatures tomorrow (Wednesday) will be cool but not unusual for early February. We’ll get a small bump back to ‘average’ on Thursday then the cold sets in. The 30s you see on Friday are for Friday morning and temperatures will be in free fall all day as the bitter blast takes control.

Two things to note on the temperature chart above. First of all, the 30° on Friday is misleading. I’ve said this before, but I want to make sure Friday isn’t just a chilly day. Temperatures are in the teens when driving home from work on Friday and in the single digits late Friday night. On Saturday morning our air temperatures will be well below zero and on Saturday afternoon we will fall back into the low teens. Sunday will be a cold start again but a nice recovery in the afternoon going back to almost 40°.

As we all know in New England, the cold is only half the battle. Throwing some wind into the mix makes it feel so much worse. And there will be wind, unfortunately, accompanying the cold air. Below is a timeline of future wind chills on Friday and Saturday. Those are dangerously cold wind chills. Frostbite can happen in minutes.