Snows lightly covers the lawn near Saxonburg Memorial Presbyterian Church in Saxonburg. Morgan Phillips/Butler Eagle

Starting Sunday night, Dec. 1, forecasts call for Butler County to be hit by multiple days of snow, with at least a chance of snow or precipitation of some kind on six consecutive days.

According to the National Weather Service, the chance of snow in Butler will reach 80% by Wednesday and climb to 100% on Wednesday night. The chance of snow is at 30% or above Thursday through Saturday.

Colton Milcarek, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh, estimates the Butler area will receive 2 to 5 inches of snow over the next week, although he stressed this is a preliminary estimate and could change in the coming days.

“Monday afternoon through Tuesday, we’re looking at maybe a quick coating, potentially around half an inch,” Milcarek said. “As we get up into Thursday night, there's potential for more snow.”

Throughout the next week, temperatures are not expected to rise far above freezing. The week’s high daytime temperature, forecast for Wednesday, is 36 degrees. As a result, Milcarek believes that even the small amounts of snow forecast for Monday and Tuesday will accumulate on untreated roads.

“Because our temperatures have been so cold, likely anything that does fall will probably stick on the road surfaces,” Milcarek said. “Even a quick dusting, particularly at nighttime, can accumulate on the roadways and make them a little slick.”

Butler County can at least say it has it better than Erie County, which was hit by over 2 feet of lake-effect snow this weekend as thousands of travelers returned from Thanksgiving vacation. The storm led Gov. Josh Shapiro to declare a state of emergency for northwestern Pennsylvania.

Milcarek said while the light snow predicted for Monday and Tuesday is meteorologically connected to the weekend’s lake-effect snow, the snow that will hit Butler County this weekend is another system altogether.

“A lot of the snow-making that comes from that lake effect is really confined to pretty close to the lake shore itself,” Milcarek said. “So there’s a really low chance of exceeding 3 inches anywhere in Butler County. The other system is a low-pressure (system) that’s coming our way.”