Bitter cold, blowing snow set to descend on Wichita. Here’s the timing of the storm

The morning commute for Wichitans on Thursday will look and feel a lot different than it did Wednesday, as an arctic blast from Siberia lands in Kansas overnight.

Around 8 a.m. Wednesday, it was 25 degrees with a wind chill making it feel like 15 degrees, according to National Weather Service data. The forecast for 24 hours later is 2 degrees, with blowing snow and a wind chill making it feel like negative 25 degrees.

That’s a 23-degree drop in air temperature and a 40-degree plummet in wind chill in 24 hours.

Wichita is expected to see only from a trace amount to an inch of snow during the morning hours. Northeast Kansas is predicted to get between 2 and 5 inches, according to NWS meteorologist James Cuellar.

The snow in Wichita is forecast to start after 3 a.m. It is expected to linger between 3 and 6 hours, Cuellar said.

The big concern for Wichita commuters Thursday morning will be blowing snow from strong winds, which will reduce visibility, the Wichita meteorologist said. Morning winds are expected to blow at 20 to 30 mph with gusts up to the high 40s.

Thursday morning’s gusts are expected to drop by about 10 mph by the time people commute home in the evening. That should make driving conditions better than they were that morning.

Temperatures that went up slightly during Thursday afternoon will drop again that night and overnight into Friday.

Friday has a high temperature in the low teens but with the winds, expected to be in the mid-20s, it will feel just below zero degrees for most of the day. It’s supposed to be a little warmer on Saturday and then even warmer on Christmas day, where the high is expected to be around 38 degrees.

Cold weather was already starting to have an impact in the area Wednesday. A Sedgwick County Emergency Communications supervisor said the “bridge is getting slick” after a semi wrecked around 10 a.m. on eastbound Kellogg near Tyler. No one was injured.

This story was originally published December 21, 2022 at 11:16 AM.