New Year's Eve forecast: where revelers will have to bundle up

The New Year’s Eve forecast shows folks in Plymouth, Wis., will be shivering and perhaps dreaming of Key West, Fla. New York's Times Square? A chilly 23 degrees with clear skies.

New Year’s Eve revelers will face radically different weather conditions depending on where they plan to party on the last evening of 2013 with conditions ranging from balmy to bone chilling.

Revelers in New York’s Times Square for the largest of the New Year’s Eve celebrations will encounter a temperature of 23 degrees F and clear skies, the Weather Channel predicts. AccuWeather forecaster Alex Sosnowski writes that party goers will feel like the temperatures are “in the teens” adding, “Nothing more than a flurry will drift across Manhattan in advance of the blizzard of confetti.”

One of the coldest celebrations in the lower 48 may be in Plymouth, Wis., a 50 minute drive from Milwaukee. According to compilation of unusual celebrations assembled by AccuWeather, after a masquerade ball dinner and dance, Plymouth will drop a large ball of cheese to mark the start of 2014. It will be the seventh time this dairy-centric celebration has been held. The expected weather conditions: a temperature of 0 degrees and snow showers.

It won’t be much warmer for those planning to gather at Chicago’s Navy Pier for a midnight fireworks show. Mike Caplan, a meteorologist with Chicago ABC television affiliate WLS, says that a substantial snowfall may hit the area this evening. “We’re forecasting 6" snowfall totals widespread across the area and, in some cases, it will be 10" or more from the looks of it,” he writes. The Weather Channel is predicting evening temperatures of 15 degrees and snow.

The warmest celebration may occur in Key West, Fla., where the New Year’s Eve temperature is expected to be 72 degrees and cloudy. There, for the 21st year, a six-foot queen conch shell will be dropped at midnight from the roof of a bar on Duval Street.

While the White House has not yet released details of how the first family will be celebrating on New Year’s Eve, we know conditions will be balmy in Kailua, Hawaii, where the Obamas have been vacationing on the windward side of Oahu. The weather conditions tonight in Honolulu, the largest nearby city, are slated to be 67 degrees and clear.  

It will be a bit cooler for party goers gathered in Los Angeles’s Grand Park for a New Year’s Eve countdown party. The Weather Channel is predicting a temperature of 48 degrees and clear conditions.

Those who want to start the new year with a dose of love and chocolate will have to brave an expected evening temperature of 24 degrees in Hershey, Pa. That is where a 300 pound, 12-foot-high Hershey’s kiss will be hoisted three stories into the air by the chocolate maker and dropped to celebrate the sweet prospects for 2014.