If you think it's cold now, the worst is yet to come!
The coldest air mass of this winter is ready to infiltrate Metro Detroit tonight with bone chilling temperatures and a prolonged period of dangerous wind chills. Wind chills will plummet between 10 and 30 degrees below zero through Saturday morning. Under these conditions, frostbite can occur in as little as 15 to 30 minutes.
This stretch of brutally cold air will likely break a record for the most consecutive days with high temperatures below 20 degrees. Today will be the ninth day in a row that Detroit will not make it past the 20 degree mark with no relief until Sunday. Since these unseasonably frigid temperatures started back on December 26th, this stretch of 12 days would break the old record of 11 consecutive days (below 20 degrees) set in February, 1936 and 1979.
Daily records for the coldest daytime highs in Detroit will also be in jeopardy. The coldest daytime high for Thursday, January 4th is 4 degrees set in 1884. Our forecast high for tomorrow is 7 degrees. The record for Friday, January 5th is 6 degrees set in 1912 and our forecast comes very close with a high of only 6 degrees. At this point, Saturday's record doesn't look to be quite as close with of 5 degrees as the coldest daytime high set again in 1912. By Saturday our forecast is back into the double digits at 10 degrees.
We finally catch a break by the end of the weekend. The coldest air retreats with more seasonable temperatures both Sunday and Monday.
