The National Weather Service office in Jackson has issued a wind chill advisory for this evening and into Tuesday morning for the Highway 82 corridor in Mississippi.
The advisory includes Oktibbeha, Clay and Lowndes counties and means wind chill readings are expected to be in the single digits.
Temperatures in the Golden Triangle area are expected to drop below freezing tonight — into the 16 to 25 degree range — and not rise above 30 degrees on Tuesday. The low on Wednesday is expected to be 16 degrees, according to the service’s Jackson office.
The Jackson office this morning forecasted two to four inches of snow and sleet for Mississippi’s southern-most counties and “a dusting up to around an inch” across the central part of the state.
According to the latest forecast available this morning, the Golden Triangle area is not slated to receive any freezing precipitation. However, windy conditions, with sustained winds of 20 to 30 mph and gusts up to 40 mph, were slated to move through the area today until roughly 2 p.m.
Meanwhile, the National Weather Service warned people from northwest Louisiana to the Mississippi Coast to gear up for another blast of cold.
Temperatures in the 50s and 60s were expected to plunge to freezing or below Sunday night in north Louisiana and tonight in north Mississippi.
“Temperatures will be the big story” early this week in north Mississippi, said Zach Maye, a meteorologist in the weather service’s office in Memphis. “It looks like lows in the morning will be from 30 to the mid-30s” and won’t get much warmer today, he said.
“Tonight’s going to be really cold,” Maye said.
Icy roads contributed to at least three traffic deaths Saturday in Mississippi and two in Louisiana.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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