Texas Winter 2017-2018

[NotSparta]

Haha at the forecasted 67 for today, 58 at 230pm. Mid 70s seem unlikely tomorrow. 40s for Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday.

80 degree temps have reached the Red River northwest of D-FW area. 83 in Mineral Wells. There's a small pocket of low clouds east of the D-FW area that's temporarily holding down temps this afternoon. It won't be there tomorrow.

...too hot for biking?

[utweather]

Haha at the forecasted 67 for today, 58 at 230pm. Mid 70s seem unlikely tomorrow. 40s for Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday.

80 degree temps have reached the Red River northwest of D-FW area. 83 in Mineral Wells. There's a small pocket of low clouds east of the D-FW area that's temporarily holding down temps this afternoon. It won't be there tomorrow.

I'm hoping the London/Seattle fog can hold on for as long as possible to keep the 80s out.. I have a feeling its gonna be a muggy spring.

[wxman57]

Haha at the forecasted 67 for today, 58 at 230pm. Mid 70s seem unlikely tomorrow. 40s for Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday.

80 degree temps have reached the Red River northwest of D-FW area. 83 in Mineral Wells. There's a small pocket of low clouds east of the D-FW area that's temporarily holding down temps this afternoon. It won't be there tomorrow.

...too hot for biking?

Oh yeah, I haven't been able to ride much this winter with the temperatures so hot (up into the 40s and 50s). I don't like to ride unless the temperature is in the 30s or colder. Might have to brave the 70+ temps in Houston this weekend, if there aren't too many showers around. Looks like that cold front will poof-out over Houston on Saturday then move back to the north on Sunday. No more freezes for the Houston area this month, and quite possibly for the rest of the winter.

[weatherdude1108]

Looks like more of a Spring weather pattern setting up, especially next Monday and Tuesday, according to EWX. The sun peaked out this afternoon. I never thought I would say the sun felt so good! Of course with the sun shining through, some instability usually follows.


000
FXUS64 KEWX 142104
AFDEWX

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Austin/San Antonio TX
304 PM CST Wed Feb 14 2018As of 230PM, latest satellite trends actually show the sun peaking
out of the clouds for the first time in the last couple days across
the eastern half of the CWA. This welcome sunshine this afternoon
will only be brief unfortunately as low clouds, fog, and
drizzle/light rain develop again overnight tonight with the continued
southerly and southeasterly moisture flux into the region that we
have been seeing over the last several days.

While overnight lows will be allowed to warm into the upper 50s and
60s tonight and highs warm as high as the low 70s Thursday, this
should be the last day of this warming before our next cold front on
Friday. However, until then, the large high pressure system over the
Gulf will maintain our current southwesterly H5 wind direction and
subsequent southerly and southeasterly surface flow.

&&

.LONG TERM (Friday through Wednesday)...
There appears to be good agreement between the NAM/GFS/ECMWF and even
tail end of the TTU-WRF 12Z run on frontal timing Friday, reaching
the northern CWA border just before noon. Due to the moisture content
being confined to the lowest 50 mb, the prospect of much rain
associated with fropa will be minimal, and have left only slight
chance PoPs in the grids for Friday for much of the CWA and slightly
higher in the eastern zones as a bit deeper moisture is available.

The front is progged to stall just to the south of the CWA overnight
Friday night and with a 30 kt 850 mb LLJ setting up a textbook
overrunning pattern towards Saturday morning, expect more light rain
and drizzle to develop moving into the weekend. A broad disturbance
will shift across the northern half of the state Saturday as well,
resulting in decent PoPs and QPF north of our area, but we will
likely miss out on the higher rainfall totals being a bit displaced
too far south from the associated upper level support beyond our
low level isentropic forcing and stalled front to the south.

A series of subtle disturbances will keep slight chance PoPs or low
end chance PoPs in the forecast through the weekend, but the most
significant feature in the long term is likely going to be Monday as
a much deeper trough sets up over the Rockies and sends various
shortwave energy across the state from the southwest. The ECMWF/GFS
differ in specifics, but in general, the region will be influenced by
the broad right entrance region of an upper jet with a strong (~40-50
kt) LLJ. In addition, we may even have CAPE over 1000 j/kg during
the afternoon and evening hours Monday and again Tuesday afternoon.
Thus our best thunderstorm chances in a while look to be this time
frame, with the more ideal set up being Tuesday vs Monday currently.
More to come on this potential with later forecast packages.

.SHORT TERM (Tonight through Thursday Night)...

[bubba hotep]

12z Euro EPS and 18z GFS both trended wetter over the next week for N. Texas. Also, I wouldn't rule out a winter wx threat for parts of Texas by the end of next week. There will be some decently cold air around and lots of energy coming out of the SW. Just need to get the timing right. Beyond that, I see a lot of potential during the 1st half of March.

[EnnisTx]

As a reminder, in 2 weeks if there are no immediate threats of winter weather we will move to the Spring thread March 1st for MAM. This will continue our meteorological calendars for each season and general discussion will be closed here.

"Winter" Over? Did you say ?over?? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!

And all this time I thought it was Japan that bombed Pearl Harbor......

[hamburgerman7070]

12z Euro EPS and 18z GFS both trended wetter over the next week for N. Texas. Also, I wouldn't rule out a winter wx threat for parts of Texas by the end of next week. There will be some decently cold air around and lots of energy coming out of the SW. Just need to get the timing right. Beyond that, I see a lot of potential during the 1st half of March.

Bubba, will it take a strong Greenland block to overpower the Pacific so we may have one last opportunity at winter events? I'm just curious

[TheProfessor]

I walked out of my Spanish class into a misty fog, it looked kinda spooky. I was half expecting to see Scooby and the gang walking around. I am concerned for the possibility of flooding in my area, our ground is already saturated from snow melt and recent rains, if the 4-6 inches of rain over the next week in the GFS verifies a lot of the OHV and parts of the Mississippi valley could be in trouble.

[bubba hotep]

12z Euro EPS and 18z GFS both trended wetter over the next week for N. Texas. Also, I wouldn't rule out a winter wx threat for parts of Texas by the end of next week. There will be some decently cold air around and lots of energy coming out of the SW. Just need to get the timing right. Beyond that, I see a lot of potential during the 1st half of March.

Bubba, will it take a strong Greenland block to overpower the Pacific so we may have one last opportunity at winter events? I'm just curious

Traditionally speaking, N. Texas has a better chance of snow with a -NAO. There are examples of snow here with +NAO but a lot of those are during a transition from -NAO to positive NAO.

[hamburgerman7070]

12z Euro EPS and 18z GFS both trended wetter over the next week for N. Texas. Also, I wouldn't rule out a winter wx threat for parts of Texas by the end of next week. There will be some decently cold air around and lots of energy coming out of the SW. Just need to get the timing right. Beyond that, I see a lot of potential during the 1st half of March.

Bubba, will it take a strong Greenland block to overpower the Pacific so we may have one last opportunity at winter events? I'm just curious

Traditionally speaking, N. Texas has a better chance of snow with a -NAO. There are examples of snow here with +NAO but a lot of those are during a transition from -NAO to positive NAO.

So far, it looks impressive, I'm assuming a byproduct of the SSW event we had

[Ralph's Weather]

Haha at the forecasted 67 for today, 58 at 230pm. Mid 70s seem unlikely tomorrow. 40s for Friday, Saturday and maybe Sunday.

80 degree temps have reached the Red River northwest of D-FW area. 83 in Mineral Wells. There's a small pocket of low clouds east of the D-FW area that's temporarily holding down temps this afternoon. It won't be there tomorrow.

If clouds hold I will stay in the 65 to 68 range and if they break then upper 70s. I am betting on 68 to 71. Clouds will very likely hold on with a fetch of off the Gulf continuing at low levels and established high dew points already. Maybe compressional heading gets us closer to the mid 70s, that is always hard to predict. Tomorrow could be the 4th day since 12/4 to see 70 here, that slows how consistently cool this winter has been. 11/6 was the last day over 80 here. We likely won't see 80 until mid March when climo starts to warm and blocking may begin to relax. The pre SSW portion of winter was kind to us in NETX. Now let's see what the post SSW portion will be like. Looks likely to be cool and wet.

[TheProfessor]

Woo! I get to wear shorts today! Although it does seem like our NWS shared my concerns and put most of their CWA under a flood watch till tomorrow. I will enjoy this warm rain today and if we could get just a bit of sun this morning maybe even sme Thunder!

[srainhoutx]

Need to closely monitor next Tuesday/Wednesday for the possibility for severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall across portions of Central/S Central/East/SE Texas extending into Louisiana. The Global models are hinting of a shortwave that may be a bit stronger than currently modeled dropping into the base of the Western trough and tapping embedded disturbances riding along our noisy sub tropical jet. PW's are expected to increase to near 2 inches which is very high for February standards across our Region.

[Ralph's Weather]

So nice to see some breaks in the clouds this morning. I am going to enjoy this warmth today. Then ready for the front tomorrow.

[downsouthman1]

Need to closely monitor next Tuesday/Wednesday for the possibility for severe thunderstorms and heavy rainfall across portions of Central/S Central/East/SE Texas extending into Louisiana. The Global models are hinting of a shortwave that may be a bit stronger than currently modeled dropping into the base of the Western trough and tapping embedded disturbances riding along our noisy sub tropical jet. PW's are expected to increase to near 2 inches which is very high for February standards across our Region.

Bring it! We need rain.

[bubba hotep]

The SREF and NAMs have started trending wetter for this weekend across N. Texas. It looks like anywhere from 0.75" - 1.5" area wide, that will be a nice start to this rainy stretch.

[Ralph's Weather]

The SREF and NAMs have started trending wetter for this weekend across N. Texas. It looks like anywhere from 0.75" - 1.5" area wide, that will be a nice start to this rainy stretch.

Ensembles for the globals are wetter than their ops so I expect the globals to trend wetter today for the weekend.

[Yukon Cornelius]

The SREF and NAMs have started trending wetter for this weekend across N. Texas. It looks like anywhere from 0.75" - 1.5" area wide, that will be a nice start to this rainy stretch.

Now if only we can get that low temp to drop a few degrees..

[TheProfessor]

Using the predicted Skew-t form the HRRR I calculated my highest K-index for the afternoon to be about 36, Which would mean high end moderate convectivity(40+ is high convectivity). A training scenario could occur due to a slow moving front. PWATs, ahead of the front are around 1.3" to 1.4", which according to my NWS is record territory for this time of year.

[rwfromkansas]

The bane of the south is that it is hard to line up cold with good moisture. It's cold and dry or warm and wet.

I am not looking forward to this warm period since it will maybe awaken the grass/buds etc. too soon.

But, it's happening. At least it seems likely at this point *unless Lucy takes away the football* that it will finally be wet. If we get some cold later toward March, great. If not, at that point it's hard to care since it's close to severe weather season anyway.