Baltimore-area residents will want to pull out their windbreakers early Monday — then reach for their winter coats starting Monday night.

The National Weather Service is predicting that Sunday’s mild temperatures will continue into Monday, reaching a high of around 56 by 11 a.m. Showers are forecast before 10 a.m.

But the winds will pick up and it will start to feel colder. Temperatures are expected to drop to around 42 as it becomes windy, with gusts as high as 47 mph. The weather service has issued a wind advisory from 9 a.m. Monday to 1 a.m. Tuesday.

WJZ has issued a First Alert Weather Day for Monday and Tuesday because of the windy conditions.

“Wind gusts in the Baltimore area could reach or even surpass 40 mph,” WJZ’s Rachael Jay writes. “In western Maryland, High Wind alerts are in place for potential wind gusts over 60 mph between Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon.”

The other story for the week, Jay added, will be “falling temperatures from Monday morning into the afternoon.”

“High temperatures peak during the morning hours Monday ahead of a cold front in the mid to upper 50s. Once the front moves through Maryland, temperatures will quickly tumble during the afternoon into the 40s.”

The rest of the week will contain a mix of cloudy skies and sunshine, with overnight temperatures falling into the 20s.

Forecasters say it will be partly cloudy Monday night, with a low of around 28 and continued high winds.

Tuesday will bring sunshine, with a high near 36 and breezy conditions. It will be mostly cloudy Tuesday night with a low around 28.

Things are looking up for New Year’s Eve, with a daytime high near 41. Partly sunny skies will give way to clouds at night, with a low around 28.

And for New Year’s Day it will again be mostly cloudy, with a high near 36. It will dip to around 24 Thursday night.

The outlook heading into the weekend is for sunshine Friday and Saturday, with temperatures hovering in the 30s by day and in the 20s by night, and a chance of rain Saturday.

The unremarkable weather in the Baltimore area comes as a powerful winter storm was sweeping east from the Plains on Sunday, driven by what meteorologists describe as an intense cyclone that is expected to impact much of the country with a mixture of snow, ice, rain and strong winds.

“Part of the storm system is getting heavy snow, other parts of the storm along the cold front are getting higher winds and much colder temperatures as the front passes,” said Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service office in College Park, Maryland. “They’re all related to each other — different parts of the country will be receiving different effects from this storm.”

Snow and strengthening winds spread Sunday across the Upper Midwest, where the National Weather Service warned of whiteout conditions and possible blizzard conditions that could make travel impossible in some areas. Snowfall totals were expected to exceed a foot across parts of the upper Great Lakes, with up to 2 feet possible along the south shore of Lake Superior.

In the South, meteorologists warned of severe thunderstorms expected to signal the arrival of a sharp cold front — sometimes referred to as a “Blue Norther” — bringing a sudden plunge in temperatures and strong north winds that will end days of record warmth around the region.

The snowy holiday season in the Upper Midwest and Northeast comes as springlike warmth continues in much of the nation’s midsection and South, where record high temperatures had Santa sweating in recent days.

The high temperature in Atlanta is forecast to be around 72 degrees Fahrenheit on Sunday, continuing a warming trend after climbing to 78 to shatter the city’s record high temperature for Christmas Eve, the National Weather Service said. Numerous other record high temperatures were seen across the South and Midwest on the days after Christmas.

WJZ, a media partner of The Baltimore Banner, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.