Southwest Louisiana can expect daytime temperatures in the mid-30s to low-40s through the end of the week.

“It’s going to be very cold and it’s going to stick around for a long period of time,” said National Weather Service Lake Charles Meteorologist Donald Jones. “Precautions should be taken to protect anything vulnerable to freezing temperatures.”

Overnight temperatures are expected to fall into the mid-20s along and south of the Interstate 10 corridor.

Low pressure developing near the Texas coast will bring increasing chances for precipitation Wednesday night through Friday night.

The combination of sub-freezing temperatures and a developing low-pressure area over the Gulf of Mexico will allow for possible snow in DeRidder and Leesville Thursday morning, “but this is expected to be a novelty event and no significant accumulation is expected,” Jones said.

“We are expecting some kind of winter precipitation,” Jones said. “We’re going to be below freezing. We’re going to have an area of low pressure develop off the northern Gulf Coast and that’s going to stream some showers across the region, but this could change in the coming days.”

At present, hazardous accumulation is not expected and any accumulation that does occur would be melted quickly by the combination of rising temperatures and above-freezing rain, Jones said.

Temperatures are expected to warm Thursday into Friday, with any frozen precipitation transitioning to a cold rain.