GRAY — Advice from the National Weather Service is rather simple this time around — bundle up and prepare to shiver.
After the early part of Friday started out warm and sunny, it looked like it might be easy going into the weekend. Not so fast, though. It is January, after all.
Forecasters were calling for cold and on top of that, an icy wind.
“Temperatures will tumble to near or below zero across the entire area tonight,” the National Weather Service posted on its Facebook page early Friday night. “Couple that with winds staying at least near 10 mph and you have the recipe for some bitter wind chills. It will feel like 30 below or worse in the northern mountains, and between 20 and 30 below in the foothills … Even down to the coast, wind chills will be below zero through the overnight. Bundle up!”
In the Lewiston area, overnight temperatures were expected to drop to zero, if not slightly lower. To the west, in and around Norway, temperatures of 9 below zero were predicted. Wind chills could drop even lower — to nearly 30 degrees below zero, forecasters said.
Oxford, Franklin, Somerset, Androscoggin, Kennebec and Waldo counties are under a wind chill advisory from 9 p.m Friday through 10 a.m. Saturday.
“The gusts of wind are wicked,” Bonny Gonya of Dixfield said.
If there was one good thing to say about the frigid weather, it was that it isn’t expected to hang around for long — a warm front is expected to roll in Saturday night. And then — because it’s the middle of fickle winter — a mixed bag of precipitation is in the forecast for Sunday.
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