Put away the T-shirts and short pants - winter is returning to the metro area with a vengeance this weekend and for part of next week.
A major winter storm is headed east and is expected to slam the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington, D.C., up to Boston this weekend with one of the Top 10 worst March storms, and the Chattanooga metro area will be right along the southern edge of the storm.
Temperatures
Saturday: High 50, low 33 Sunday: High 50, low 34 Monday: High 49, low 37 Tuesday: High 49, low 28
The latest word from the National Weather Service is that East Tennessee could see three to six inches of snow in the mountains in the Knoxville-Bristol area, with sleet and some snow potentially a problem for the Chattanooga area, starting Saturday night and extending into Sunday morning.
Exactly how far south the storm will reach won't be known until Saturday.
"We should start off Saturday cool and breezy with highs in the 49- to 53-degree range," said WRCB-TV Chief Meteorologist Paul Barys. "We'll start out with rain, and that will turn into a wintry mix, then sleet and snow after midnight."
Barys said areas north of Chattanooga could see up to two inches of very wet snow.
"It won't be a blizzard or anything like that," he said. "The only place roads may be dicey is in higher elevations because it will be colder up there. I'm predicting a low of 33 in the valleys Saturday night, but in the upper 20s farther up."
The good news is that temperatures will warm up into the 40s Sunday afternoon, so most of the slush should melt away.
"You'll want to get up early Sunday," if you want to see the snow, Barys said.
But colder temperatures will move in later in the week. The weather service is predicting a low of 28 degrees Tuesday evening in the Chattanooga area.
Contact staff writer Steve Johnson at 423-757-6673, sjohnson@timesfreepress.com, on Twitter @stevejohnsonTFP, and on Facebook, www.facebook.com/noogahealth.