Cold Spell Continues in Northern California; Warm-up expected mid-week

The California Highway Patrol reported several accidents involving icy conditions today, and a number of schools in the Sierra foothills were on a delay or were canceled because of the icea.

David Rowe is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sacramento.  He says the cold is expected to stick around Northern California through the middle of this week, but it's unlikely we'll be breaking any more records. 

Rowe says it's about ten degrees colder than normal in the Sacramento area right now, but this has been a very cold week in the region's history:

"As we go forward in time we're entering some of the all-time record cold spells in the Sacramento record books: one that occurred in 1990 and another in 1998, so it's going to be kind of hard to break those records since they're down into the teens."

Rowe says starting mid-week, things should start to gradually warm up:

"We'll see that probably by next weekend.  It looks like the air mass will modify quite a bit.  We should be back into the 50's for highs during the day and into the 30's, maybe even 40 degrees for lows, so it'll be more typical December weather."

More typical temperatures are expected by the weekend.

Forecasters say it's important to remember to care for pets, plants and the possibility of freezing pipes as the cold continues.

Over the weekend 2-3 feet of snow fell in the Sierra mountain passes, and there were even snow flurries reported as low as Folsom and the Roseville and Rocklin areas.

Last week, record low temperatures in the 20's and 30's were set in Sacramento, Stockton and Modesto.