After the coldest night of the autumn season in southeast Wisconsin get ready for warmer temperatures and the return to clouds and rain. A low pressure system near the panhandle of Texas will pass south of Wisconsin on Wednesday and that will bring back clouds today and occasional rain on Wednesday through Thursday. Some of the rain in the Milwaukee area may mix with snow at night.

This week is Winter Awareness Week for Wisconsin, a time to remember safety rules and get your home prepared for the chilly winter months ahead. Winter storms cans be very crippling and deadly and there are plenty of examples from the past. On this date in 1940 a brutal winter storm referred to as the Armistice Day Storm also originated in the panhandle of Texas and brought warm temperatures on the 10th and then blizzard conditions on the 11th and 12th. The storm dropped more than 27 inches of snow in the Midwest, winds up to 80 miles per hour, and snow drifts up to twenty feet high. Temperatures dropped from the sixties into the teens in a few hours, causing 154 deaths from Minnesota to Michigan.

While forecasting is better these days, winter weather is the cause for about seventeen thousand automobile accidents each winter season in Wisconsin.