It's a clear winter evening but the TV meteorologist is predicting that another Alberta clipper will race into Indiana by morning and lay down another quick dusting of snow, making travel hazardous. It will be followed by bitter cold temperatures for the next couple of days.

Related: Weather was the top story in Indiana in 2015, the year that was!

Say what? Canada is sending us a fast sailing ship with a cargo of snow? Then Canada is shoving an ice box full of cold air on us as well? What is an Alberta clipper anyway?

The answer to this and 1,000 other weather questions can be found at theweatherprediction.com. Click on the link New book: Click Here…., and select hint "723. Alberta Clipper."

Bone-chilling cold: Not even brutally cold weather which descended on Mike Brocksmith's farm near Vincennes could stop Barry Fisher, with NRCS, from holding a show and tell no-till clinic in the unheated storage shed. He just put on his coveralls, and invited guests to do the same!

Hint 723 explains that an Alberta clipper is actually a cold front that generates on the lee-side of a low pressure system in Alberta, Canada. Occurring most often in winter, it typically brings cold air and windy conditions to Indiana.

When the weatherman on TV mentions the term Alberta Clipper, you know that you're in for anything but sailing weather. You're likely to get a fast-moving cold front instead, perhaps with a light dusting of snow, but certainly with cold temperatures on the backside of it. How cold it gets in your area depends upon the time of year that the Alberta clipper shoots down out of Canada. In deep winter, it can sometimes bring extremely cold air deep into Indiana and surrounding Midwest states.

Related: Where is all the snow and 20 below zero weather?

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Scheeringa is the associate Indiana state climatologist. He writes from West Lafayette