A boastful winter storm laden with snow for subtropical places where it isn't supposed to snow will sweep through Florida this week with Palm Beach County also feeling the deep chill as temperatures plunge into the low 40s here.

The coldest air is expected on Friday and Saturday mornings when the front blows out a days-long slog of mushy weather, replacing it with a taste of Siberian air. An official forecast from the National Weather Service on Friday is for a high temperature in West Palm Beach of 61 degrees with a low Saturday morning of 44 degrees.

Normal daytime high temperatures for late January are 75 degrees as measured at Palm Beach International Airport, with a normal low of 58 degrees.

“It’s not necessarily a great time to come to Florida,” said George Rizzuto, a meteorologist for the NWS in Miami. “But it’s still probably one of the warmest places to be in the whole U.S. right now.”

The snow on Tuesday triggered a first-ever blizzard warning for areas of southern Louisiana, shutdown portions of Interstate 10, sparked winter-storm warnings from Texas through Florida’s Panhandle, and prompted a state of emergency declaration from Gov. Ron DeSantis.

By 3 p.m., the National Weather Service measured 4.5 inches of snow at the Mobile Regional Airport in Mobile, Alabama, which is about 60 miles west of Pensacola. At about the same time, the NWS office in Tallahassee said it was becoming increasingly concerned about heavy snow bands developing over the western Panhandle and said conditions could "quickly become a very dangerous, life-threatening situation for those on the roads."

"I don't have to tell anybody that we are not necessarily used to walking in a winter wonderland here in Florida. This is atypical weather for our region," said DeSantis, who cautioned that Florida drivers aren't accustomed to driving in freezing conditions. "If this were South Dakota, they would just shrug their shoulders."

DeSantis said up to 6 inches of snow is possible in isolated areas. But the white stuff won’t reach the southern tip of the Sunshine State.

More: White Christmas? No, but remember the day it snowed in South Florida?

Still, the atmospheric set up is similar to the winter system that brought snow to South Florida on Jan. 19, 1977. Then, as now, a bulging area of high pressure over the northwest coast of the country pushed the jet stream high into the upper latitudes, twisting it into a deep dive into the southeastern subtropics.

But instead of the bottom of the U-shaped dive funneling straight down the Florida Peninsula as it did in 1977, it’s touching down closer to the central Gulf Coast states, leaving the warm waters of the Gulf to moderate temperatures.

“It’s hard to get cold air to come down into Florida because you have to have the wind direction just right,” said AccuWeather meteorologist Alex DaSilva, who predicted that snowfall records in areas of the Panhandle may topple on Tuesday.

The snowfall record in Pensacola is 2.3 inches that fell in March 1954. DaSilva forecast 3-6 inches on Tuesday for Pensacola.

“There is definitely a buzz,” said Pensacola resident Elizabeth Eubanks who was waiting early Tuesday for the snow to start. “It’s totally exciting. The town has been kind of shutting down and they have been preparing our bridges.”

Eubanks runs the From the Ground Up Community Garden in Pensacola. She spent the weekend with volunteers harvesting what they could and looking forward to the short bite of frigid air that will help the fruit trees blossom and curtail nuisance insects.

“But we had to say goodbye to the bananas,” she said.

The snow started falling at about 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in Pensacola.

Rizzuto said some areas north of Lake Okeechobee could experience temperatures in the 30s Friday and Saturday mornings.

For Palm Beach County, northwest winds beginning Thursday night with gusts as high as 22 mph on Friday could mean wind-chill temperatures in the upper 30s. That's probably not going to be cold enough to open shelters. In Palm Beach County, shelters open when temperatures are forecast to fall to 40 degrees or less for a period of four consecutive hours or more. Shelters also will open if the wind chill is forecast to reach 35 degrees or less for a period of four hours or more.

In the Treasure Coast, a wind advisory was issued for Tuesday night through Wednesday morning, but temperatures should be similar to Palm Beach County with Stuart and Fort Pierce dipping into the upper 40s Friday morning and mid-40s Saturday morning.

Normal January temperatures are expected to return Sunday with highs in the mid to upper 70s and lows in the upper 50s to low 60s.

Through Monday, the average temperature of 64.6 degrees in West Palm Beach this month was 2 degrees below normal, according to the Southeast Regional Climate Center. If temperatures remain below normal through Jan. 31, this month could mark the coldest January since 2010.

Whether snow ever falls again in South Florida is anyone’s guess, but DaSilva isn’t optimistic.

“They actually saw accumulating snow in Miami,” DaSilva said. “We may not see that again due to the overall warming of the planet.”