Greater Boston is looking into a true wintery mix of weather conditions over the weekend.

“There is a storm system coming through this weekend. We’re expecting pretty much every type of winter precip. you can think of,” Kyle Pederson, a National Weather Service meteorologist at the Norton station, told the Herald Friday.

That grab bag of winter precipitation is expected to begin Saturday afternoon with snow as a weather system approaches from the southwest.

Boston and everything north of the Massachusetts Turnpike — Interstate 90 — will get as much as 3 to 6 inches of snow from the initial dump before that transitions into freezing rain and then regular rain that Pederson said he expects will dry out by Sunday evening.

Communities south of Boston will get the same thing, but on a faster timeline as it is hit first by the weather system. Pederson predicts 2 to 4 inches of snow in the area.

And because of the contours of that system, which will feature temperatures right around freezing that will then quickly warm up, the snow is “going to be that heavy wet stuff that’s tough to shovel,” Pederson said.

“The warmer your temperature is, the more water mixes in with your snow and makes it heavier,” he said.

As the snow starts to fall Saturday afternoon, temperatures should be right around 30 degrees, rising a little to around 31 degrees in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Then temperatures rise more dramatically: 33 by 8 a.m. Sunday and continue to steadily rise to as high as 42 degrees by the evening — before crashing dramatically overnight.

“A close to 20 degree drop in 12 hours,” Pederson said.

Moving out from Boston, parts of New Hampshire could see greater snow according to a NWS station in Maine, with possibly 6 to 10 inches. Central and western Massachusetts and into Connecticut will have a greater chance of heavy freezing rain, which could make roadways more dangerous and could cause isolated power outages.

Regardless, the weather will be a bit of a rollercoaster.

“If you’re going to be traveling, especially Sunday evening into Monday morning, be careful,” Pederson said, “it could certainly be slippery travel conditions.”

A man walks along Nantasket Beach. (Photo By Matt Stone/Boston Herald)

West Roxbury’s 9-month-old Maxine King bundles up for the snow at Arnold Arboretum. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)