(Radio Iowa) – Temperatures are going to warm up today (Tuesday), but you should enjoy it, because it won’t last long. National Weather Service forecaster Rod Donovan says parts of the state could get to above 40 degrees. “Right now, we’re really monitoring how much cloud cover will have across the state because that will certainly have an impact on how warm we get,” he says. “But right now, it does appear that most areas across the will get above freezing and we even have some low to mid 40s in the parts of far southern and southwest Iowa.” Donovan says we could see melting and fog across the state, and some crust on top of the snow, but that’s won’t last as 50 mile an hour winds will move in Tuesday evening.

“These fifty mile per hour winds will likely erode that quickly and result into significant blowing and drifting of snow and potentially whiteout or even blizzard conditions,” Donovan says. The wind will and blowing snow will last through tonight and into Wednesday morning. “One thing we’re really watching for is the potential for some snow showers where you could get potentially a quick one inch with that — in addition to even further reduced visibility in the falling snow,” Donvan says. “But right now the large portions is going to be really what we call like a ground blizzard where you have that existing snowpack, where a large portion of central and northern Iowa have the snowpack over six inches right now, even the Highway 20 corridor is over 15 inches.” That system will drop the temperatures and then another will bring in more snow before the week is out.

“We are going to be colder going into Wednesday right now highs in the 20s and 30s and most of that’s probably going to occur earlier in the day and then that will be similar to Thursday. And we do have that next system coming in on Thursday where we’d have another round of likely accumulating snowfall across a large portion of Iowa and they’ll be followed up by a pretty cold Friday and in upcoming weekend” Donovan says. Donovan says we haven’t had continued December storms like this in some time. “Well, it’s certainly more active than many of our past Decembers. I mean, we’ve had past Decembers we’re discussing here today, back in December 2009, December 2000 was a big one where we were extremely snowy and cold,” he says. “So we’re certainly much more active than we’ve been certainly in the past several years.”

You are advised to monitor the weather situation tonight through tomorrow for any changes in the forecast.