NATCHEZ — While it may be hard to believe after days of sub-freezing temperatures, brighter skies are on the horizon.

A hard freeze warning for the Miss-Lou will continue through this afternoon, but National Weather Service meteorologist Jared Allen said by Monday temperatures will return to normal.

“Going into Monday afternoon we will see temperatures slowly on the rise and getting back to more seasonal conditions,” he said.

That means high temperatures for Monday should reach the low to mid 50s, Allen said.

“We are certainly looking at warmer weather than we’ve been having,” he said. “Monday should be about 40 degrees warmer than what you woke up to (Saturday).”

Sunny skies and calm winds are also expected for Sunday and Monday. Sub-freezing temperatures moved into the area on Thursday with overnight lows in the teens and daytime highs in the 20s. Allen said Adams County hasn’t seen January temperatures like these since the early 1980s.

“In 1985, during the first week of January, you had one day at 8 degrees,” he said. “That same week in 1982, it got all the way down to 6 degrees.”