Winter has certainly arrived in Iowa, and we have been feeling some rather extremely cold temperatures lately.

Weatherology Meteorologist Megan Mulford says the average daytime temperature for this time of year in Iowa is 20-30 degrees, with the overnight lows in the 10’s to single digits. Mulford notes that the mild fall and early winter that Iowans saw was a result of the “jet stream” not running it’s typical course, when warmer temperatures occurred when the jet stream travels north to Canada from the Gulf of Mexico. But now the jet stream is moving to its typical position and pulling with the “polar vortex” causing the extremely cold temperatures later this week.

“The polar vortex actually becomes more concentrated when it’s outer edge (becomes more) wobbly. The polar jet can dip down really, really far.”

The National Weather Service is predicting the coldest days to be Tuesday through Thursday this week, but they are also predicting sunny skies. Mulford explains why colder days include sunny skies.

“These kind of temperatures comes with a high pressure system. This (past) weekend produced a little bit of some snow showers and a little bit of mixed precipitation. But usually when lows push through you get a chance in the winds and those winds come out of the north, northwest. And so that’s going to bring in all of that artic wind behind it. So that’s why you’re usually very cold temperatures are on sunny days. So it always looks nice but it’s really cold.”

A wind chill watch will be in effect for the Raccoon Valley Radio listening area tonight through Thursday.