After the snow, expect c-c-c-cold to settle in over the Kansas City area

Along with the snow shovels in the morning, better dig out the long underwear.

The region is plunging into a deep freeze, with wind chills of zero to 10 degrees below zero expected overnight.

And that’s just the beginning. By early next week, wind chills could plummet to 20 to 30 below zero.

The culprit, a system from northern Canada that brought snow into the metro area late Wednesday afternoon, is probably going to hang around for a while.

“We’ll see steady snow continue for the balance of the evening, tapering off at 11 to midnight,” said Evan Bookbinder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “We should see a couple of inches across the metro, give or take. It’s pretty widespread.”

Slick roads were causing some minor car crashes in the metro, police said, mostly on highways.

But the bigger story, the weather service said, is the cold.

“We’re going to have a number of dangerously cold wind chills over the week ahead,” Bookbinder said.

Lows on Thursday morning could be 3 to 5 degrees, with highs Thursday of 10 to 13 degrees, he said. Lows early Friday could dip to 2 below zero, with Friday’s high reaching about 30 degrees.

The average low temperature for this time of year is 20, and the normal high is 38, Bookbinder said.

Temperatures are expected to stay well below normal for the next seven days, he said, with temperatures dropping to their lowest in two years on Monday and Tuesday as children head back to school after winter break.

Monday’s highs could be zero to 5 degrees, with lows of 5 to 10 degrees below zero. And wind chills Monday and Tuesday morning could hit 20 to 30 below zero.

“There’s no chance of any significant warmup for the next seven days,” Bookbinder said. “We may squeak barely above freezing on Saturday, but that’s just kind of a one-day shot.”

The one silver lining, perhaps?

“The snow falling tonight is very powdery, so it should be easy to manage,” he said.

This story was originally published January 1, 2014 at 7:20 PM with the headline "After the snow, expect c-c-c-cold to settle in over the Kansas City area."