After cold snap, dreary weather remains - but brings warmer temperatures for awhile

When you blearily stumbled out of your home this morning from your post-football stupor, you may have had a pleasant surprise: it was wet and windy, but, all in all, it actually felt kind of nice outside.

That’s because the deep freeze that settled in over the South last week has packed up and left, bringing some much-needed relief from the teeth-rattling temperatures that plagued the South and the whole east coast last week.

Highs for the week should be in the high 60s, and lows aren’t expected to drop below 55 either, according to the National Weather Service. That’s a far cry from a week ago, when temps sunk to between the low 20s and mid-30s.

The bitter cold temperatures iced down cities across the southeast. Governor Deal declared a state of emergency as the winter storm that precipitated the cold moved north to form a “bomb cyclone” that lashed New England.

Columbus and the Valley avoided the worst of the storm’s wrath. Mainly, it was just really cold.

It’ll be warmer for the foreseeable future, but we’ll still be in for a bit of a dreary week, the National Weather Service predicted.

Nothing dangerous or extreme, but heavy clouds and showers are expected for at least part of every day, with some heavier rain expected Thursday night through Friday night.

After that, things should clear up some - but at the same time, we might begin to see temperatures fall again. The high for Saturday is only 50 degrees - downright balmy for winter but still a sign that we might be heading back into cooler temps over the weekend.

It’s still a bit too early to tell anything more about what we can expect next week with any real accuracy, but Weather.com expects temperatures to stay in the 40s for most of the beginning of the week before ticking up again, with lows sometimes dipping below freezing at night.

This story was originally published January 9, 2018 at 10:59 AM with the headline "After cold snap, dreary weather remains - but brings warmer temperatures for awhile."