Thanks guys! It's good to be back.
A few notes tonight on the incoming event::
-The shortwave to our west looks to have taken the slower route I mentioned a couple of days ago. This means that clouds and precipitation should continue over the area into the afternoon. The result of this will be a high likelihood of "chilly" afternoon maximum temperatures, ranging only from the mid 40s to mid 50s for most of the region (coldest in the areas that see the most persistent rain and cloud cover).
-The shortwave is also slightly stronger than what the models were trending towards a couple of days back. The result of this can clearly be seen in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles tonight where winter weather advisories (calling for 1-2" of snow) are currently in effect. The stronger shortwave and in turn colder upper level temperatures
may also allow for the possibility of a few snowflakes getting a little further east than thought 48 hours ago as well. This includes areas of extreme western and northwestern Oklahoma, where using the top-down method on forecasted GFS soundings such as this one (
http://www.twisterdata.com/index.php?so ... hive=false ) just northwest of Sayre, OK, indicate the modest possibility of a little bit of wintry precipitation reaching the ground. Cloud top temperatures near -40C indicate a 100% chance that ice is prevalent in the cloud. The column is also nicely saturated with a beautiful southwesterly flow near the dendritic growth zone (~460-530mb in this particular case), which bodes well for the formation of large snowflakes in that region. The falling precipitation then stays below the melting point of 0C until about 700mb, where it goes on to straddle the 0C line (+/- 1C) all the way down to 900-925mb or so. The biggest negative in this sounding is the warming that then takes place into the mid/upper 30s near the immediate surface. However, given the large flakes aloft and a potentially decent precipitation rate, I wouldn't at all be surprised to hear of some mixing near and perhaps just east of the TX/OK border tomorrow morning, especially if the atmospheric state were to wind up a little bit colder than the current GFS forecast.
With that all said though, this is still out in far western Oklahoma, and for the main population centers of Wichita Falls up through OKC and Tulsa, the precipitation type should remain just a cold rain..as can be seen in the following forecast sounding forecasts from the latest GFS and NAM respectively: (
http://www.twisterdata.com/index.php?so ... hive=false ,
http://www.twisterdata.com/index.php?so ... hive=false). Both of these soundings show a much more pronounced warm layer aloft as well as warmer surface temperatures. This means that while there will also be large snowflakes in the clouds above our heads, they should have all melted into rain by the time they reach our doorsteps.
If only the low-levels were a good 5-10+ degrees colder...
[
Thursday, 9:48am Update --> Looking at things again this morning, it appears as though surface temperatures never got quite chilly enough for the mixing to take place in extreme western Oklahoma near the OK/TX border. Most of that zone only got down to about 38-42F overnight/this morning, which is a few degrees too high. I would have liked to have seen at least 36F, but preferably closer to 32-34F before I would have anticipated any snowflakes reaching the surface. Oh well. It's still only October. Given a few more weeks things might have turned out differently.]
The posts in this forum are NOT official forecast and should not be used as such. They are just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. They are NOT endorsed by any professional institution or storm2k.org. For official information, please refer to the NHC and NWS products.
The posts in this forum are NOT official forecast and should not be used as such. They are just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. They are NOT endorsed by any professional institution or STORM2K.
Update: The temperature never quite made it to 32F. According to the hourly reports, the lowest KOKC fell last night was 34F).
