Traveling home for the holidays could be tough this year with a wintry storm expected for Christmas Eve.

According to the National Weather Service, a storm expected to affect a large swath of the Midwest is likely to make its way into Kenosha County tonight, dropping a mix of snow, freezing rain and sleet on the region.

“Christmas Eve, especially, will be a difficult traveling day in the Midwest,” said Bon McMahon, meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sullivan.

The weather service is advising travelers keep a close eye on changing weather forecasts heading into the holiday, saying travel by air or road may be difficult in an area cutting from Missouri through Iowa and into Wisconsin.

“Our advice is to, depending on where you are traveling, keep up with the forecast but also be prepared to change traveling plans,” McMahon said.

McMahon said snow is likely to begin falling in Kenosha overnight tonight, with precipitation shifting into a mix of freezing rain and sleet Thursday morning. By late morning or early afternoon, it is expected to transition into rain.

“Thursday night and Friday, as the low (pressure system) goes past to the west, cold air will return and rain will transition back to snow,” McMahon said.

“It’s unfortunate that it comes right at the holiday. Even local travel, if you are going to relatives in town, could be dicey on Christmas Eve or Christmas itself,” he said.

For travelers, the area south of the Wisconsin border into the Chicago area is likely to have more rain than snow. To the west and northwest, McMahon said, the area will likely be straight snow, with areas like Minneapolis, Duluth and Green Bay forecast to get as much as a foot of snow.

At General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee, spokeswoman Pat Rowe said the busiest travel day of the holidays is actually the day before Christmas Eve, with 19,000 travelers expected today. “It’s actually not more travellers than we would have on an average day, it’s really the type of traveler that’s different,” Rowe said of holiday travel times. Families replace the business travelers that usually dominate airports.

During difficult weather, air travelers should allow extra time to make it to the airport, and check with their airlines for departure time delays.

Rowe said the airport is prepared for difficult weather during the holiday, saying there is a staff constantly monitoring runway conditions with the help of sensors embedded in the pavement.

The freezing rain expected this week may be unpleasant on the roads, but Rowe said the airport finds the biggest challenge in heavy snows. “I would say the blizzards with white-out conditions (are most difficult) when it is not only snowing too fast to keep up with, and it is really unsafe for the plow drivers to be out on the runways because they have a hard time seeing the warning lights.”