Bitter cold returns and brings wind chill advisory
Another round of dangerously cold temperatures has prompted the National Weather Service to issue a wind chill advisory.
An arctic front will not only bring much colder temperatures, but winds out of the north could gust at speeds of 10 to 40 miles per hour by midnight Monday night and continue into Tuesday morning, January 21, 2014.
The NWS says those gusty winds will combine with the cold to drop wind values as low as 30 degrees below zero.
Overnight lows were forecast to fall to between five above and 12 below zero by Tuesday morning.
The NWS says the same disturbance bringing those cold temperatures could bring another inch or two of snow to local communities, with slightly higher accumulations along a line from Williamsburg to Muscatine to Galesburg.
Communities along and north of a line from Williamsburg to Clinton to Sterling were initially placed under a wind chill advisory, which later expanded to include most counties in our area. Counties outside the advisory area could still experience wind chill values as low as 20 below zero during the advisory time.
A wind chill advisory means very cold air and strong winds combine to generate low wind chills that can result in frost bite in as little as a half-hour of exposure.
The local wind chill advisory was in effect from midnight Monday night to noon Tuesday.
The wind chill advisory area included Muscatine, Scott, Knox, Stark, Keokuk, Washington, Louisa, Jefferson, Henry (Iowa), Des Moines, Van Buren, Lee, Whiteside, Rock Island, Henry (Illinois), Bureau, Putnam, Mercer, Henderson, Warren, Hancock, McDonough, Scotland, Clark, Buchanan, Delaware, Dubuque, Benton, Linn, Jones, Jackson, Iowa, Johnson, Cedar, Clinton, Jo Daviess, Stephenson, Carroll, and Ogle counties.