Ready the shovels: First snowfall of the season expected Friday

The landscape will finally turn more winter-like this weekend as the first accumulating snowfall in southern Wisconsin is predicted to arrive Friday evening.

The forecast calls for 1 to 2 inches, with most of it falling fairly quickly between 5 and 9 p.m. Friday. In southeastern Wisconsin, it's expected to drop between 7 and 9 p.m.

"It will be kind of a short window, a burst before things will taper off by midnight," said Sean Miller, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Sullivan.

Because it's the first appreciable snowfall of the season — Milwaukee did get two-tenths of an inch on Nov. 10, but no one really noticed — authorities are cautioning motorists to add more time to get to their destinations Friday evening.

"The main reason we're emphasizing this so much is because it's the first widespread snow and statistics show we have more crashes in the first snow," Miller said. 

Department of Transportation figures show most accidents happen during lighter snowfall, perhaps because motorists don't realize roads are slippery or they don't leave enough time and space to stop in heavy traffic. 

A low-pressure system dipping down from central Canada and into central Minnesota will reach Wisconsin on Friday before heading out through the rest of the Great Lakes region, Miller said.

Because of cold temperatures, the snow is expected to be more dry and fluffy and not wet. And with the mercury stuck stubbornly below the freezing mark, snow piles will stick around. That, in turn, will help keep Wisconsin feeling like a freezer.

In fact, a bitter freeze could be on the way by the end of next week, Miller said. While it's more difficult to predict weather further out in time, the long-term forecast is predicting temperatures could plunge to single digits and zero by the middle of December and later into the month.