A taste of wintry weather will be blowing into southwest Minnesota over the weekend.

The forecast for Marshall includes a little snow and temperatures around freezing, the National Weather Service office in Sioux Falls said.

In other parts of the U.S. the forecast includes snow in the Northern Plains, and potentially record low temperatures in parts of the South.

“We’re going to see snow picking up in the Marshall area after midnight (Friday), said NWS meteorologist Matthew Meyers. Meyers said the snow will continue today, but start to clear up by the afternoon. With high temperatures close to freezing today and Sunday, the snow could stick around for a little while, Meyers said. However, temperatures are expected to climb back into the 50s later in the week.

Generally, the NWS is forecasting an inch or less of snow in southwest Minnesota, with low chances for higher amounts in some areas.

“The main thing is that this is the first snow of the season,” Meyers said. People should remember to drive carefully, and make sure their vehicle headlights and windshield wipers are working, he said.

The Dakotas and parts of southern Minnesota have the highest potential for snowfall late Friday through Saturday morning, including some areas that could see as much as 2 to 3 inches of snow, said Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Temperatures are expected to plummet as a front spreads from the Northern Plains to the South through the weekend. Highs will likely stay in the 30s in parts of Nebraska, Iowa and northern Missouri by Sunday, and the chilly temperatures are expected to spread into Oklahoma and northwestern Arkansas, Cook said.

“It’s a little bit unusual to have this strong of a cold push this early in the season,” Cook said.

At the Roosevelt Park Zoo in Minot, North Dakota, where up to 3 inches of snow was forecast Friday night, the staff has begun typical preparations for the cold, General Curator Chelsea Mihalick said. African animals, including a giraffe calf born Sunday, are already inside heated buildings, and maintenance workers make sure heaters are working properly.

“We’ve gotten pretty lucky as far as we haven’t gotten anything yet, or the cold weather just now has come,” Mihalick said.

Some animals, such as tigers, love the snow. Cubs were born at the zoo in May.

“This will be their first snowfall, so it will be fun to see them running around in the snow,” Mihalick said.

The expected cold spell won’t last, though, as warmer temperatures are forecast for much of the central U.S. starting Wednesday and Thursday, Cook said.

“This is a brief cold snap. It won’t stay around very long,” he said.

In the Marshall area, temperatures are expected to climb into the high 30s on Monday, and into the low 50s by Tuesday.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report