Top off your windshield washer fluid. Northland roads are about to get sloppy with an early January thaw.
After dropping below zero again tonight, the National Weather Service in Duluth said temperatures are expected to reach the mid-20s today and reach above freezing from Friday through Monday.
Highs Sunday could hit 40 in parts of the Northland. The average high this time of year is about 18.
The warm weather will make a melting mess of the snow left on streets after what was the fifth-snowiest December since records have been kept at Duluth International Airport starting in 1941 and the sixth-snowiest according to Duluth records since 1875.
December ended with 35.4 inches of snowfall and with 18 inches still on the ground -- the most in a decade. After bone-chilling cold for the first 15 days, the final 16 days of the month were all above normal. In the end, the average temperature in December was just 0.6 degrees below normal.
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For all of 2007, Duluth's average temperature of 40.5 degrees was the ninth-warmest year since records have been kept at the airport. That's slightly warmer than expected at mid-month when the National Weather Service predicted the year would finish as 10th warmest since 1941.
There's a good chance that a major storm will hit somewhere in the Upper Midwest early next week, the Weather Service noted, but with such warm conditions expected the precipitation could fall as a combination of rain, freezing rain, sleet or snow.
