The coldest Christmas Day in more than 20 years is on tap for Monday in the metro area, and temperatures will only nose dive from there to well below zero by next week, the National Weather Service said.
Monday's predicted high of 4 degrees above zero will make the holiday the coldest since 1996 when thermometers registered a high of 9 below.
Arctic air that has been bottled up across Siberia and the North Pole will break off "from where it belongs" and rush south into Minnesota on Sunday, and with it bring the first readings with negative numbers in the Twin Cities this season, said Eric Ahasic, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen.
"We've been watching for this cold air to come in for a while, and on Sunday you'll start to feel it," Ahasic said.
Once the cold arrives, it won't give up its grip anytime soon. Temperatures during the day will be stuck in the single digits and definitely will fall into the single digits below zero right through New Year's Day, and possibly longer.
And there is the possibility the mercury could go even lower, Ahasic said.
"It certainly looks to stay well below normal into the New Year," he said. But to drop to minus 22 degrees as it did on Christmas morning 1996, "we would need some snowpack to get that cold."
As the Winter Solstice arrived Thursday morning — that means the sun will start moving northward — the Twin Cities had just 2 inches of snow on the ground. That's enough to qualify for a White Christmas, said Pete Boulay of the Minnesota State Climatology Office.
