Northeast Ohio weather: Light rain departs tonight, focus turns to colder air and chances for snow

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - A few light rain showers have lingered across Northeast Ohio this evening.

Once the rain departs, our focus will shift to snow and colder temperatures by the weekend!

High temperatures will only be in the 30s starting on Friday and continuing through next week.

In terms of snow, the shorter-term forecast is quite tricky.

We’ll have a few flurries and light snow showers around on Friday, but there will be more numerous snow showers in the area Friday evening.

These may briefly reduce visibility and produce a quick, light coating on grassy and elevated surfaces.

A few additional light snow showers and flurries will occur on Saturday.

On Saturday evening, the lake effect snow machine will get going.

Expect lake effect snow bands and squalls in the Primary Snow Belt from Saturday night through Sunday, and even into Sunday evening.

Snow Belt communities should anticipate one to three inches of snowfall, where squalls persist, on Saturday evening.

An additional one to three inches of snowfall will occur on Sunday, where squalls persist.

It’s important to remember that this is lake effect snow, which means it will be highly localized.

Those of you in Lake, Ashtabula, Geauga, and eastern Cuyahoga counties, will see the majority of the snow.

Outside of the Primary Snow Belt, expect very little, if anything, in the way of accumulation through the weekend.

The overall weather pattern will remain bitterly cold through the holidays.

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