A long-awaited and refreshing pattern change is beginning to expand across the nation over the upcoming days, AccuWeather meteorologists say, with a wave of much-needed warmth spreading from the Midwest and Northeast to the southern United States.

After persistent cold this February, temperatures will start to go up again in Massachusetts this weekend, with even a chance of 50 degrees in the forecast next week. Here is, perhaps, the most important weather alert in quite some time:

This weekend will start a warming trend for much of the nation, after a particularly brutal stretch of below-average temperatures.