This is the first winter where the National Weather Service has been issuing Cold Weather Advisories and Extreme Cold Warnings.
NWS Meteorologist Brad Small in Des Moines explains the reasoning behind the changes.
“Historically, we’ve issued wind chill watches and wind chill advisories and wind chill warnings when we’re expecting really cold weather episodes. The main thing with those when we get through the winter is that it’s cold and sometimes the cold weather is accompanied by wind and sometimes it’s not. We’ve consolidated those products into extreme cold watches, extreme cold warnings, and cold weather advisories. Those will all be consolidated, so those will encompass the cold weather, whether we’ve got screaming horrible winds or whether it’s pretty calm outside. The criteria in how we issue these isn’t going to really change. There’s still going to be a lot of emphasis on the wind chill temperatures when we issue these. The thing to keep in mind there will be that that could be a minus 20 wind chill with a five mile per hour wind where there’s not a whole lot of wind or it could be a minus 20 wind chill where the temperature is a lot warmer but the wind is like 20 to 25 miles per hour.”
The bitter cold is in the forecast for much of this week.
