Believe it or not, now comes the hard part when it comes to weather

With frigid temperatures and iced-over roads that aren’t going to melt, the weather is downright dangerous from now until Friday afternoon.

“We got the ‘flash-freeze’ that we predicted, and now is the time we have to deal with it,” KIRO Newsradio meteorologist Ted Buehner told MyNorthwest. “The roads were already wet when the cold front came through and froze everything solid.”

The temperatures went down quickly as the heavy snow moved through the area.

4-6 inches of snow predicted for Seattle Monday night

“We’re going to be seeing more sun for the next two days, but without the blanket of clouds we usually get this time of year, the heat will radiate into space and we’ll have the coldest temperatures of the year,” Ted said.

Look for temperatures as cold as the single digits up to the Canadian border and in the 20s in the Olympia area.

The National Weather Service in Seattle tweets to look for freezing rain moving in on Thursday night with the most dangerous time on the roads, Friday morning.

🥶🌧️🧊 FREEZING RAIN
Here’s the latest freezing rain ice accumulation animation for THU evening thru SAT afternoon. We are really concerned about the impacts to the FRI AM commute across the Puget Sound. That said, ice accumulation will be possible anywhere in western WA. #wawx pic.twitter.com/4cmiSZkOLe

— NWS Seattle (@NWSSeattle) December 21, 2022

“The moist warm air will spread over the current cold air Thursday night and erode the cold air Friday. It is that transition that will involve messy wintry weather before turning to rain Friday. The temperatures could be around 50 for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” Ted said.

This is the first time we’ll be hitting the 50-degree mark since Nov. 24.

The following 48 hours will be the most dangerous time to travel. The closer you get to Friday evening, the better off you will be.

Cold moves into the Puget Sound; Dangerous conditions remain

The passes will be much better now that it has stopped snowing and the plows have moved through, but Friday may involve avalanche control on the mountain highways.

By Friday afternoon, the weather conditions around SeaTac Airport will be back to normal. Other things might affect flight delays and cancellations, but Ted says the weather won’t be among them.

In the KIRO 7 weather blog, chief meteorologist Morgan Palmer writes: The coldest morning since 2010 is expected for Seattle on Thursday morning with a low temperature of 16 degrees. However, this wouldn’t even set a new daily record low for Dec. 22 as that was 14 degrees set back in 1990. Still, morning lows in the single digits and teens around Western Washington will be very dangerous, with wind chills will be in the single digits to below zero and we’ll continue to have icy conditions on some roads.

KIRO 7 contributed to this report