All things considered, there are certainly more concerning places to be this winter than the Tampa Bay area.

While the Midwest is getting walloped with an absolutely chilling arctic blast that the National Weather Service says will head to most of the eastern U.S., the bay area is seeing cold air move in that makes things cool, but still quite nice.

A cold front moved through the area Tuesday night into Wednesday morning and was already well on its way south by the morning commute. The front brought with it some cool, dry air that'll hold over the area until Thursday, adding to the already cold air that's kept temperatures below normal for the first half of the week.

However, even with the colder air, it'll still be 60 degrees and dry in the region today, albeit a bit cloudy. The wind chill in Minneapolis was between -45 and -65 degrees early Wednesday morning, and the forecast high in Chicago is -12 degrees. Even just a few hours to the north, in Tallahassee and Atlanta, wake-up temperatures were in the 30s and 20s respectively. While here in Tampa, the day started toward the mid 50s.

How's that for perspective?

According to the Weather Service, the region kind of got lucky. The hitherto dubbed polar vortex supplying the chills dropped in from Canada and pushed south and east thanks to the flow of the polar jet stream, instead of pushing all the way south.

"That cold air mass, when it came down from Canada, instead of plunging down into our area it stayed south and east," forecaster Tony Hurt said. "We basically got sideswiped or by passed. We didn't get the brunt of it."

Back in Tampa Bay, the polar vortex is almost unnoticeable. It's keeping temperatures about 10 degrees below normal, but at 60 degrees that's still far from frigid. Things will dip into mid 40s overnight, but the cooler air will begin to leave Thursday as highs head back up to 65. The warming trend will continue into next week with temperatures popping over normal by Friday and increasing to the mid and upper 70s thereafter.

The warming does, however, come with an increased chance for rain. There's currently a 30 percent chance for rain on Friday and a 40 percent chance Saturday. That moisture will be gone Sunday as the weekend finishes out with some dry warmth that takes us into next week.

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Contact Daniel Figueroa IV at dfigueroa@tampabay.com. Follow @danuscripts.