COLD AIR INCOMING....

The cold is coming. It's already pouring south as of Sunday night. Here's a look at the temperatures at around 10 pm Sunday -

Snow has fallen in the northern U.S. and now that storm system is moving south. It won't be very strong and won't produce much in the way of precipitation. There will be some rain and snow on Monday.

Very minor accumulation of snow is possible (generally under an inch). The cold will follow and temperatures will tumble Monday evening out of the 30s and 40s... end up here Tuesday morning:

Temperatures won't recover much Tuesday afternoon, even under sunshine -

The remainder of the week will be fairly quiet and cold. Temperatures will be in the 20s Wednesday, back in the 30s Thursday and then near 40 Friday. Another little storm system comes in Friday and knocks temperatures back again.

You can see the ups and downs that happen here for Cedar Rapids:

And the Quad Cities:

There's no defined trend as we head into the next week or two.. temperatures generally will run near and slightly below normal. Here's the outlook from the Climate Prediction Center through December 18th:

There are some signs that we get slightly warmer in the third week of December, but I don't think it will last very long - based on the current trends..

RK