With no major snowstorms and just one mid-January cold snap, it hasn’t been much of a winter so far in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan.

But the cold is making its return this week, with forecasters predicting near-zero temperatures for the weekend and saying they’re likely to stay below freezing until early next week.

“Quick-moving [storm] systems have basically opened up the door for the arctic air this weekend,” Jay Berschback, chief meteorologist at WTVG-TV, Channel 13, said Tuesday. Fresh snow cover, clear skies, and light winds expected Saturday night could drop local temperatures “near or below zero” on Sunday morning, he said.

And while snows during that period are more likely to be of the dusting-to-an-inch variety, city and state officials said Tuesday that will be enough to keep roadway maintenance crews on their toes.

IN PICTURES: Snow falls in Toledo area

“We’re actually doing some snow and ice control,” said David Welch, commissioner of the Toledo Division of Streets, Bridges, and Harbor, whose crews were called in at 5 a.m. Tuesday to get them out on the streets before the morning rush hour.

The streets division also had pre-treated major arteries Monday with salt brine, so pavements were mainly wet Tuesday morning despite light snow and falling temperatures. Mr. Welch said crews would stay on 12-hour shifts because of light snow’s presence in the forecasts.

“I’m a little worried about what might come overnight,” he said Tuesday evening.

“It doesn’t take much for the roadways to become slick. We’re keeping an eye on things,” said Theresa Pollick, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Transportation’s district office in Bowling Green.

Through last week, Ms. Pollick noted, ODOT statewide had used its least amount of labor and materials in a decade because of mild conditions. This week’s more winterlike conditions, she said, “will be just enough to keep us busy.”

While “subzero chill” became a familiar refrain in Toledo during the past two winters, the coldest temperature so far this season at Toledo Express Airport, the official National Weather Service reporting station, is 3 degrees on Jan. 18. That was the second of five straight days with single-digit lows in Toledo.

Lows are forecast in the teens Thursday and Friday mornings and highs in the 20s today through Friday. But a fresh cold front expected to sweep through the lower Great Lakes late Friday will bring even colder air, with forecast highs only in the teens on Saturday and Sunday to go with single-digit — if not lower — morning lows.

“The polar jet stream, pretty much all winter it’s been staying up north,” said Kirk Lombardy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Cleveland.

Now, he said, it’s “taking a dive” and with the Great Lakes mostly unfrozen, downwind areas could be in for significant lake-effect snows.

Toledo, which as of 5 p.m. Tuesday had gotten just 0.7 of an inch of snow at the airport, isn’t under that gun, but it only takes a little to insulate the ground and reinforce the cold air, Mr. Berschback said.

Contact David Patch at: dpatch@theblade.com or 419-724-6094.

First Published February 10, 2016, 5:00 a.m.