Raise a cheer to the coming year and a scarf to the coming cold

If you’re planning to venture out to toast the coming new year, you’ll need to bundle up to remain toasty.

The first week of 2018 is shaping up to be a very cold one, according to meteorologists along the coast.

“Near seasonable temperatures Saturday will crash behind a strong, but dry cold front into Sunday,” Josh Weiss, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wilmington, North Carolina, said in a briefing Friday.

“A very cold New Year’s Eve is expected,” he said, with wind chill values predicted to fall below 10 degrees Sunday night.

“Looking ahead, a prolonged period of very cold temperatures is forecast for the first week of January. Temperatures may average 10-20 degrees below normal,” Weiss said.

A dry cold front is expected to sweep into the Grand Strand over Saturday night, bringing a chill to people headed out Sunday morning.

On New Year’s Eve, “temperatures in the mid-20s at midnight will fall into the upper teens by daybreak in many locations,” Weiss said.

And although there remains a chance for wintry precipitation on Wednesday, the incoming cold front may push any moisture further south “leaving us high and dry,” according to WPDE’s Chief Meteorologist Ed Piotrowski.

This story was originally published December 29, 2017 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Raise a cheer to the coming year and a scarf to the coming cold."