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Frigid weather arrives

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While cold weather can certainly be expected anytime during a North Dakota winter, it’s never totally welcome. When coupled with high winds, below zero temperatures can be both miserable and dangerous.

Minot will experience both this week.

The National Weather Service is warning about widespread cold and frigid wind chills reaching down to minus 40. That’s cold enough to produce frostbite to exposed skin in as little as 10 minutes. Today’s high may stay below zero. In fact, says the NWS, the temperature might not get above zero in Minot until sometime Friday, just barely.

Tonight’s low is expected to bottom out in the minus 10 range before rising to perhaps minus 5, if we’re lucky, on Wednesday. Wednesday night is expected to bring the coldest weather to the region, possibly dipping beneath minus 20. According to the NWS the thermometer may not get out of the sub-zero range until sometime Friday, and then just by a few degrees.

In addition windchills, a rating of the chilly combination of cold temperatures and wind, will further the effect of what is shaping up to easily be the coldest week of the winter season thus far. Wind gusts as high as 20 mph are possible today, Friday and Saturday. If realized, that much wind will plummet wind chills to the 25 to 40 below zero range.

Temperatures in the double digits below zero are in the forecast for Friday and Saturday nights, too. The frigid air might move out the region early next week, clearing the way for daytime highs to possibly reach above 20 degrees before more cold weather sweeps over the area.11

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