The National Weather Service has issued a warning for a winter storm over the weekend.
Models show that the conditions will likely become dangerous rapidly on Friday afternoon or evening and the predicted freezing temperatures will likely keep any precipitation on the ground for days, NWS Meteorologist Monique Sellers said Wednesday.
'We'll start off with a little bit of rain halfway throughout the day on Friday; really going to start to see things deteriorate quickly as we get into the afternoon and evening time,' Sellers said. 'Temperatures will tank quickly.'
When the cold front moving in causes the temperatures to drop, the rain will turn into 'a range of precipitation types, especially up in Pilot Point and the surrounding areas,' she said.
That could include freezing rain into sleet and then snow.
Saturday is going to be 'when the travel impacts are really going to' build up, Sellers said.
'Once the temperatures fall below freezing, they're not really going to get back above freezing until early next week, so the opportunity for any sort of improvements is going to be nonexistent until we get really into Monday, maybe even not until Tuesday for some areas,' Sellers said.
She added that there will be 'dangerous cold weather as well.'
'We're going to see the temperatures are going to get down into the teens and twenties, and really, you guys might even flirt with single-digit temperatures,' Sellers said. 'And that's just the temperatures. The wind chills are going to be even worse. We're talking 0 and below in that time frame.'
Although the confidence is high in the temperature forecast, the models are less confident regarding the precipitation.
Sellers encouraged people to prepare as early as possible to minimize travel over the weekend, saying she hoped that would have been done by Thursday, which was after press time but before the publication of this issue.
'We're really pushing that folks take this seriously and get those preparations done,' she said.
