Freezing Rain and Sleet Could Mean Slippery Roads Tonight

Just as the warmest Christmas in history fades into the rearview mirror, some more fitting December weather is already on the way. 

The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory this morning that runs from 4 p.m. today until 7 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The NWS is calling for sleet and freezing rain, which could mean some slippery travel conditions in the Centre region as the afternoon and night progress. They said that sleet will turn into freezing rain, with projected ice accumulations of a tenth inch and sleet accumulations under an inch.

“A period of mixed precipitation late this afternoon and evening will turn to sleet then freezing rain,” the advisory said. “The precipitation should become plain rain late tonight or very early Tuesday morning.”

The NWS warned that trees and power lines may get coated with ice, but that any such accumulations would be light. That being said, travel will likely be slippery, “especially before midnight when sleet is expected to the the dominant precipitation type.”

Winds won’t be particularly heavy, with forecasts of 5 to 15 miles per hour with gusts up to 35 miles per hour. Temperatures will get down to around 30 degrees before slowly rising above freezing by the end of the night.

The AccuWeather forecast calls for temperatures to drop down as low as 30 degrees, but their RealFeel says that it will feel more like 13 degrees around 8 p.m. tonight.

Freezing rain and then sleet are forecasted to come down intermittently from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. with real rain taking over in the early morning as things warm up. AccuWeather is calling for a wet Tuesday morning, with rain starting around 5 a.m. and not letting up until just before noon.

You can find updated forecasts from Accuweather on our website, right here.