Button up: Winter slides back into Lodi area

If you put away the winter blankets and space heater for the season, it’s time to pull them back out. For the next few days, at least, winter is making a comeback in Lodi, with recordbreaking overnight lows expected.

The city and surrounding area can expect nighttime temperatures to drop into the mid-20s through at least Friday night, said Joe Curtis, a meteorologist with the private forecasting firm AccuWeather.

“We have a pretty big cold front that moved across California (on Tuesday),” he said.

It brought with it a rush of cold air from the north and west, along with some wind.

The National Weather Service has a freeze warning in place through Thursday night, warning of sub-freezing overnight temperatures in the northern San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento Valley and parts of the Bay Area.

Residents could expect widespread areas of “sub-freezing” temperatures, with the coldest weather expected in the early morning hours on Thursday, the weather service warned.

“Frost and freeze conditions could kill crops, and other sensitive vegetation. Make sure pets have shelter from the cold,” the warning stated.

Wednesday’s overnight low is expected to drop down to about 26 degrees Fahrenheit, Curtis said, potentially breaking a record set on Feb. 23, 2018, when Stockton dropped to 28 degrees. (Records for the City of Lodi are not available.)

Expected overnight temperatures in the mid-20s could also break Stockton records on Thursday and Friday, Curtis said. The current record low for Feb. 24 is 29 degrees, set in 1935, and the record low for Feb. 25 is 26 degrees, set in 1964.

Temperatures should swing back into the normal range for this time of year over the weekend, Curtis said, with highs in the mid-60s. However, more bursts of cold and fluctuating temperatures may visit Lodi in the coming weeks, he added.

Unfortunately, the return of winter is unlikely to come with any rain, at least this week.

Parts of Northern California saw scattered showers on Tuesday, but as of press time, Lodi was not so lucky. The rest of the week was expected to be dry.

“There’s a chance that we could see a couple of showers Sunday and into Monday ... but it doesn’t look like anything substantial,” Curtis said.

Lodi has not seen any precipitation since Jan. 6, when it received 0.01 inches of rain. The city received only 0.05 inches of rain in January.

On the positive side, snow fell in the Sierra Nevada mountains Monday and Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service. Weather service forecasters predicted about a foot to 18 inches of snow falling at summit level over those two days, with several inches possible above 4,000 feet.

Chain controls are in place on some stretches of Highway 50, Interstate 80, Highway 49 and Highway 88, according to Caltrans.

In South Lake Tahoe, daytime highs in the low-to-mid 20s will give way to lows well below freezing this week, possibly reaching single digits tonight.

Sacramento Bee staff writer Michael McGough contributed to this report.