The first cold snap of the season is expected to arrive in West Virginia early Thursday, as Arctic air filters in from the north, causing temperatures to drop into the teens and single digits across much of the state by dawn and then plunge into the near-zero to subzero range Thursday night and early Friday, according to the National Weather Service's Charleston Forecast Office.
Winds accompanying the Arctic blast's arrival are expected to include gusts in the 30- to 40-mile-per-hour range in the mountains and in the 20- to 30-mile-per-hour range elsewhere, making possible wind chill values approaching -20 degrees at Snowshoe Mountain in Pocahontas County, -5 degrees at Elkins and Davis, and -2 degrees at Beckley and Clarksburg by dawn on Friday.
In the Charleston area, Thursday afternoon's high temperature is expected to rise only five degrees above the predicted early morning low of 15 degrees, and then drop to 9 degrees by daybreak on Friday.
With a northwest wind taken into account, the Charleston area could experience wind chill values of about 2 degrees above zero late Thursday or early Friday. By Friday afternoon, the temperature is expected to rise to 32 degrees, with a 58 degree high and rain in the forecast for Saturday.
The cold snap follows the fourth-warmest autumn on record for West Virginia, according to data recently released by the Charleston Forecast Office.
In Charleston, the average temperature for the autumn of 2016 was 60.8 degrees, nearly 4 degrees above the norm. The National Weather Service defines autumn, for record and climate-keeping purposes, as the months of September, October and November.
The hottest autumn on record for Charleston was 65.6 degrees, set in 1931 at the beginning of the Dust Bowl era, followed by the autumn of 1919, when the average temperature was 62.6 degrees. The city's third-warmest autumn took place in 1985, when an average temperature of 62.5 degrees was recorded.