Mild and quiet conditions last until New Year’s Day

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) -This evening we will see gradually clearing skies with areas of patchy fog developing out towards the plains, this will include areas from Buffalo to Wall South Dakota. We will be slightly colder than last night with lows in the teens to mid 20s for this evening. As we head into Friday, we will see mostly clear skies across the region as temperatures will climb into the upper 20s to low 40s for Friday afternoon winds will be breezy for areas such as Gillette Wyoming, Pine Ridge, and Martin South Dakota with wind gusts up 20 miles per hour.

For New Year’s Eve, Saturday afternoon we will see partly cloudy skies return to the region. Temperatures will stay mild and near seasonable with highs in the mid 30s to mid 40s for the afternoon. Temperatures during the evening time hours will fall into the mid 20s to mid 30s.

On New Year’s Day we will see snow starting to move into the region as we track an upcoming winter storm. Snow will look to stick around until Tuesday. However, there is still plenty of uncertainty when it comes to things like storm track and snow totals. There is confidence that travel impacts will occur, but severity is still uncertain.

As for now the GFS, or American model, has most of Western South Dakota receiving snow with the highest impacts being south of I-90. The EURO, or European model has snow still impacting areas south of I-90, but the heaviest snow will remain in Nebraska and Iowa.

Over the next seven days temperatures will remain cool with highs in the 20s to 30s with partly sunny skies and temperatures looking to warm up as we head into the weekend.