ASHEVILLE — The chances that Western North Carolina will see measurable snowfall this week are dwindling even though temperatures are expected to remain well below normal through the New Year.

“The chances of snowfall for Asheville going into Thursday are pretty much non-existent now,” said Josh Palmer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “We’re talking a 15 to 20 percent chance of snow showers, and we’re not expecting any accumulation.”

A hazardous weather outlook issued by the weather service Tuesday morning calls for possible flurries or a wintry mix late Thursday night and into Friday morning, but Palmer said we might not even get that. The weather models he's following are showing less and less moisture headed toward the mountains, making significant precipitation unlikely.

The weather service doesn’t predict that high temperatures will climb above 40 degrees after they hit 41 on Tuesday, the warmest day of the week. Each night, the temperature will drop to the low 20s, Palmer said.

It’s certainly cold enough for flurries, but the cold is at least part of the reason why Asheville isn’t likely to see any snow on the ground before the end of 2017. The Arctic air that has been funneling down into the mountains in one high-pressure system after the next is coming from central and northwestern Canada. Much like the ginger ale of our northern neighbors, that Arctic air is Canada dry, meaning that it needs to collide with a body of moisture to produce snow.

Typically, the Gulf of Mexico provides the requisite moisture for the snow that skiers and school-kids love. But this week it doesn’t seem to be shaking out that way, according to Palmer.

“We thought originally that we’d have some precipitation, but that has just not come to pass, which is a good thing as far as weather impacts are concerned. We sort of dodged a bullet with this particular system,” Palmer said. “There’s always room for things to change, but at this point our confidence is increasing that the precipitation is going to stay too far south.”

With temperatures this cold, the weather service “can’t say never” when it comes to snow, but all of the models Palmer and the other meteorologists are following aren’t showing much in the way of moisture. The cold, however, will be hanging around for a while. Palmer said it’s likely that temperatures will remain well below normal into next week.

Asheville homeless shelters are currently operating under "code purple" conditions, meaning that they are extending their services to a greater number of people in order to get them out of the cold. Code purple operations are triggered any time temperatures are forecast to dip below freezing.