Area warms up after record low temperatures

By Staff
Melissa Dozier-Cason, FCT staff writer
Today's temperatures will feel like a heat wave compared to the record cold temperatures felt by Northwest Alabama over the past few days.
Franklin County residents woke up to temperatures near single digits Friday morning, and teens and 20s Saturday and Sunday.
The National Weather Service (NWS) in Huntsville issued a freeze warning for most of North Alabama on Friday. The warning stayed in affect until around 10 a.m. yesterday.
According to the National Weather Service, the Muscle Shoals Airport reported a record low of 15 degrees, which broke the old record of 16 set in 1927.
Even though winter is two weeks away, Alabama is already in a deep freeze.
Temperatures in Russellville stayed below freezing all day Friday, according to weather reports.
Lows struggled out of the teens on Saturday with highs in the upper 40s.
In contrast, today's high is expected to reach the low 50s by this afternoon, and on into the 60 by Monday.
According to the NWS, By Sunday and Monday, clouds will start to increase over the area and temperatures will warm to near 60, but any rain should hold off until Tuesday.
Our next storm system will bring us decent rain chances and mostly cloudy skies for Tuesday and Wednesday.
Another cold front should push through the area by Wednesday night, but the air behind this front will not be of the arctic variety.
Temperatures Thursday and Friday should be near average for this time of the year with highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s.
The arctic blast did not bring snow to our county. The snowy weather stayed well north of the state, and the weather predictor is not predicting a white Christmas for our area.
So all hopes of wintry weather for Christmas have been dashed.