Bitter arctic blast could make Kansas City Christmas among coldest in city’s history
Bundle up Kansas City because weather conditions are turning chilly, and they’re about to get much colder, with possibly dangerously cold conditions on the way.
The metro area will get its first glimpse of what’s to come Thursday as temperatures will remain in the low to mid-30s. Blustery conditions will make it feel much colder, with wind chills in the 20s, according to the National Weather Service in Kansas City.
A few snow showers or flurries will develop across northern Missouri and northeastern Kansas, but no accumulations are expected.
Colder conditions move in overnight, with wind chills expected to dip into the upper single digits to mid-teens. It will be even colder Friday night when wind chills fall into the single digits.
Kansas City typically is in the low to mid-20s overnight to the low 40s during the day this time of year.
But the current below normal temperatures are just a hint of what’s to come.
“We’ve been monitoring a set-up here the last couple of weeks that’s going to transpire next week,” said Joseph Bauer, a meteorologist with AccuWeather. “It’s really a heck of a set-up.”
An upper level low pressure system will move in from Canada and dive southward into the central part of the United States, bringing an arctic air mass that might be cold enough to challenge daily record lows in the northern Rockies and northern plains, he said. Cities like Billings and Great Falls in Montana and Bismark, North Dakota, could see low temperatures anywhere from the mid-20s to low-40s below zero.
Towards the end of next week, that extremely cold air mass is expected to plunge southward, swinging through Kansas City, before eventually turning to the east. By Dec. 22 or 23, Kansas City will likely see its coldest part of the day tumble below zero, Bauer said.
“It is going to feel definitely bitterly cold outside on those dates,” he said.
Along with the extremely cold conditions, Bauer said he is monitoring the potential for a winter storm to develop, which will eventually scoot towards to the eastern seaboard later in the week. For Kansas City, it appears that the storm will swing by quick enough that while there’s a risk for snow or other wintry precipitation, it will be a glancing one.
The bitter cold is expected to last all the way through Christmas, possibly making it one of the coldest in the city’s history, he said. The coldest Christmas Day in Kansas City was in 1983, which had an average temperature of 6 degrees below zero. The average temperature for this Christmas is expected to be in the teens.
Conditions are expected to slowly warm up the following week, with temps returning back to near normal by New Year’s Day.
In advance of the extremely cold conditions, people should be wrapping up any outside projects and getting their winter gear out of the closets, Bauer said.
“This will definitely be the most substantial cold push we’ve seen in this season yet,” Bauer said.
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 11:30 AM.
