Texas winter wx thread (2009-2010)

[Ntxw]

I suspect changes as we get closer to Monday from many WFO's across TX. This will likely be another situation where changes will occur closer to the events than several day ahead of those events. As I've mentioned before in this Topic, we are entering into a very interesting time frame. The pattern that we are seeing looks close to 1967, 1972/73, and some 'hint's' of 1983 and 1989 analogs if you are into those. What complicates the situation is the setup is just abit different. We have a Central based Pacific El Nino event (entering into phase 8 ) rather than an El Nino closer to S America. There are suggestions tha another MJO pulse will head E from the Indian Ocean Regions toward the dateline. Add to the mix a continued -AO , -NOA, Greenland Blocking and another Polar Vortex event in the Great Lakes Region. The heights in the Arctic remain very high and some suggestions by the CPC Super Ensembles that this pattern will persist until Mid January. There is also a massive High in China/W Siberia that may slide across the N Pole during this time frame. We shall see, but bears watching IMHO.

I suspect that you are right. Seems like these systems true intentions aren't being shown until they are at the door-step, so to speak...

Unless, of course, you're Msstateguy83, that is, reading the weather charts and models days in advance!!!

The recent storm, if you looked at the upper charts and air flow as well as satellite imagery you had a general idea of what could happen. Even though surface maps changed day by day run by run, maps like the 500mb level consistently had this storm suppressed further south. The CMC GGEM had a general idea as well a day or two in advance of this system. As for next Tues\Weds I haven't seen anything consistently to show wintry weather for Texas on any models or maps. People have said the colder air mass is in place as well as the EC flip-flopping but I don't have access to that information.

[iorange55]

I suspect changes as we get closer to Monday from many WFO's across TX. This will likely be another situation where changes will occur closer to the events than several day ahead of those events. As I've mentioned before in this Topic, we are entering into a very interesting time frame. The pattern that we are seeing looks close to 1967, 1972/73, and some 'hint's' of 1983 and 1989 analogs if you are into those. What complicates the situation is the setup is just abit different. We have a Central based Pacific El Nino event (entering into phase 8 ) rather than an El Nino closer to S America. There are suggestions tha another MJO pulse will head E from the Indian Ocean Regions toward the dateline. Add to the mix a continued -AO , -NOA, Greenland Blocking and another Polar Vortex event in the Great Lakes Region. The heights in the Arctic remain very high and some suggestions by the CPC Super Ensembles that this pattern will persist until Mid January. There is also a massive High in China/W Siberia that may slide across the N Pole during this time frame. We shall see, but bears watching IMHO.

I suspect that you are right. Seems like these systems true intentions aren't being shown until they are at the door-step, so to speak...

Unless, of course, you're Msstateguy83, that is, reading the weather charts and models days in advance!!!

The recent storm, if you looked at the upper charts and air flow as well as satellite imagery you had a general idea of what could happen. Even though surface maps changed day by day run by run, maps like the 500mb level consistently had this storm suppressed further south. The CMC GGEM had a general idea as well a day or two in advance of this system. As for next Tues\Weds I haven't seen anything consistently to show wintry weather for Texas on any models or maps. People have said the colder air mass is in place as well as the EC flip-flopping but I don't have access to that information.

The GFS has shown each day on at least one model some kind of wintry precip for North Texas, and West Texas. Not every single run, but every day for the past 3 days or so it's been on there.

[Ntxw]

I hope it does start to show something on the 0z and 12z runs consistently this weekend.

[aerology]

Going to repost this again, as it still seems as valid as it did then.

Monday, December 14, 2009

2009 - 2010 Winter outlook
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
One of the problems with the current models is the reference time frame is very narrow for initial conditions, and changes with in the past three days, a lot of times, will introduce presistance of inertia, to the medial flows, for several days, consistent with the actual flows, as the Lunar declinational atmospheric tides, make their runs across the equator from one poleward culmination to another.

Then as the tide turns and we have the severe weather bursts at declinational culmination, they get confused, or surprised, as the initial inertial effects reverse for about four days before the sweep to the other pole, that brings back the smooth flows, the models understand.

So that when the Lunar declination went to Maximum North on December 3rd, turbulence and shear introduced into the atmosphere, from the turning tide, (the models do not know about), surprised them with the usual couple of tornadoes. Now (12-13-09) that we are ~20 degrees South Lunar declination, the models have a full buffer, of five days of linear inertial movement, from the Moon's trip South across the equator (12-09-09) and is slowing it's movement.

Coming up on the Southern extent culmination, producing a secondary tidal bulge in the Northern Hemisphere, bringing us to the mid point of a 27.32 day declinational cycle (one of the four routine patterns that cycle on an 109.3 day period). This particular one (#1) that started back on Dec 3rd, has incursions of polar air masses that come down from Western Canada, through Montana and the Dakotas, to make up the Northern part of the atmospheric tidal bulge.

So I would expect to see a large invasion of cold dry air sweep almost all the way to the Gulf coast again, then the produced frontal boundary with the interesting weather, that includes change state intense precipitation. Freezing rain, where the warm over runs cold, and snow where the cold undercuts the more sluggish warm air, still moving North East by inertia alone, severe weather to form in that trailing edge of the warm moist mass, that gets over taken from behind by the polar air mass that tries to follow the tidal bulge back to the equator, which for the next 4 of 5 days powers up the cyclonic patterns generated by carolis forces, and finishes out as the Moon approaches the equator again.

[This is where we are now, the moon crossed the Equator headed North on 12-24-2009] (<added note)

Expect the same type of interaction again for a primary bulge production by the passage back North, culminating on 12-30-09, pumping in a solid polar air mass very consistent with the pattern we had on 12-03-09, (the North "lunar declination culmination")[LDC], then (#2) the next Rossby wave / jet stream regime pattern, comes back into play with much more zonal flow, and air masses invading from the Pacific, (of the two sub types of) phase with lesser amounts of Gulf moisture entrainment in this one, more in the other #4.

The (#3) third 27.32 day pattern with polar air masses invading in from the Minnesota / Great Lakes area and sweeping out through the Eastern sea board, and mostly zonal flow out west, from 01-27-10 till 02-23-10, comes next.

The fourth 27.32 day cycle, that looks very similar to #2 but with much more moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, usually has more hail and tornadoes associated with it than Pattern #4, and typically flows up Eastern side of tornado alley. Will be in effect from 02-23-10 through 03-22-10, and should produce the first big surge of severe tornado production, from about March 20th 2010, until about March 26 or later as the Next polar air mass cycle is coming out of western Canada, and should make for steep temperature gradients, and ion content differences.

Richard Holle

[gofrogs]

Well he 0z gfs says about two inches of the white stuff for fort wroth. But iam worrried about the new years eve storm becuase its not even showing up on the gfs anymore. I guess theres no storm.

[zaqxsw75050]

Well he 0z gfs says about two inches of the white stuff for fort wroth. But iam worrried about the new years eve storm becuase its not even showing up on the gfs anymore. I guess theres no storm.

Well, don't worry about the detail now. The last storm we wasn't even suppose to snow according to GFS a few days out if I remembered right but look what happened

[orangeblood]

VODKA COLD is on the way! The siberian express will be arriving just in time for the new year and there looks to be nothing stopping it. It looks as if deep south Texas even needs to be prepared for this one.

[srainhoutx]

VODKA COLD is on the way! The siberian express will be arriving just in time for the new year and there looks to be nothing stopping it. It looks as if deep south Texas even needs to be prepared for this one.

The ECMWF continues to suggests a significant dump of Arctic Air into the CONUS. The airmass verbatim pushes S into Central America.

[Portastorm]

There's some good reading with pro met Larry Cosgrove's big post yesterday.

http://www.examiner.com/x-3775-Houston-Weather-Examiner~y2009m12d25-WEATHERAmerica-Newsletter-Friday-Christmas-December-25-2009-at-600-PM

[iorange55]

Long discussion from DFW NWS but it's worth the read

WEATHER IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN QUIET BUT COLD THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT.
ENORMOUS WINTER CYCLONE OVER THE CENTRAL US WILL WEAKEN AND HEAD
OFF TO THE EAST DURING THE NEXT COUPLE DAYS. AS THE SYSTEM EXITS
AN UPPER TROUGH AXIS WILL ROTATE THROUGH THE REGION THIS EVENING.
THIS WILL SEND A REINFORCING COLD FRONT THROUGH NORTH TEXAS
TONIGHT...SO WINDS WILL SWITCH TO NW AND HIGH TEMPS MONDAY WILL BE
A LITTLE COOLER THAN TODAY DESPITE SUNNY SKIES.

MAIN FORECAST CHALLENGE CONCERNS THE SYSTEM ON TUESDAY...WHEN A
PRONOUNCED SHORTWAVE IN THE SOUTHERN/SUBTROPICAL JET STREAM MOVES
ACROSS...AND WHETHER TEMPS WILL BE COLD ENOUGH FOR FROZEN PRECIP.
THE FORECAST 500 MB SYNOPTIC PATTERN IN YESTERDAYS MODELS LOOKED
A BIT MORE FAVORABLE FOR A SNOW EVENT HERE BECAUSE THEY KEPT THE
UPPER HIGH PLANTED ACROSS THE NORTHERN ROCKIES. THIS CLOSELY
MATCHED A CLIMATOLOGICALLY FAVORED SYNOPTIC PATTERN FOR SNOW OVER
THE NW/N CWA. TODAY THE MODELS BREAK DOWN AND MOVE THE RIDGE INTO
THE NORTHERN PLAINS...WHICH CAUSES INTENSE WARMING OF THE 500-850
MB TEMPS VIA SUBSIDENCE ACROSS THE PLAINS. THIS MID-TROPOSPHERIC
WARMING WILL HAVE LITTLE IMPACT ON SURFACE TEMPS DUE TO INSULATION
EFFECTS OF HIGH ALBEDO SNOW COVER. BUT SNOW REQUIRES A COMPLETELY
SUBFREEZING LAYER...AND LATEST MODELS ARE NOW RIGHT AT 0C FROM
700-850 MB WHICH LEAVES LITTLE ROOM FOR ERROR. ADDITIONALLY...THIS
SYSTEM IS MERELY AN OPEN WAVE MOVING ACROSS...AND PRECIPITATION
WILL BE GENERATED VIA A BROAD REGION OF ISENTROPIC LIFT...WHICH IS
SYNONYMOUS WITH WARM ADVECTION. MODEL SOUNDINGS DEPICT THE COOLING
EFFECTS OF EVAPORATION COUNTERING THE WARM ADVECTION...AT LEAST
INITIALLY ON TUESDAY. THEREFORE EXPECT RAIN TO MIX WITH SLEET/SNOW
TUESDAY MORNING WITH A TRANSITION TO ALL RAIN FROM SOUTHEAST TO
NORTHWEST AS THE DAY PROGRESSES. HIGHEST QPF AND POPS WILL BE IN
THE SOUTHEAST WHERE GFS/ECMWF ARE BOTH SUGGESTING ENHANCED
VERTICAL MOTIONS WITHIN A FRONTOGENETIC BAND. WILL CONTINUE TO
MONITOR THE TRENDS IN THE MODELS TO DETERMINE WHETHER ANY
ACCUMULATION/IMPACTS WILL BE POSSIBLE WITH THIS SYSTEM...BUT ANY
RISK OF SUCH FAVORS THE NW CWA AT THIS TIME.

COLD RAIN SHOULD END TUESDAY NIGHT FROM WEST TO EAST...BUT KEPT
SOME LOW POPS IN ON WEDNESDAY DUE TO TIMING UNCERTAINTIES. MODELS
HINTING AT A SECOND SHORTWAVE MOVING ACROSS ON THURSDAY WITH GFS
INDICATING A POTENTIAL FOR SNOW FLURRIES. MOISTURE IS REALLY
LACKING WITH THIS WEAK SYSTEM...AND WILL KEEP FORECAST DRY.
OTHERWISE...THE COLDER THAN NORMAL CONDITIONS WILL CONTINUE AS
HIGH PRESSURE IN THE PLAINS WILL ENSURE NORTH WINDS FRI-SAT.

MODELS ARE SHOWING A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF UNCERTAINTY BY NEXT
WEEKEND. THE GFS SUGGESTS A GRADUAL WARMING TREND TO NEAR OR
SLIGHTLY ABOVE NORMAL. THE CANADIAN HAS ANOTHER SNOW EVENT AND
ARCTIC INTRUSION NEXT WEEKEND. THE ECMWF HAS BACKED OFF ON ITS
VERY COLD FORECAST AROUND NEW YEARS DAY WITH LESS AMPLIFICATION OF
A SHORTWAVE TROUGH IN CANADA...BUT NOW IS SUGGESTING AN EXTREMELY
FAVORABLE SYNOPTIC SET UP FOR A SIBERIAN ORIGIN AIRMASS AND 1050
MB SURFACE HIGH TO DROP INTO THE PLAINS BY DAY 10-12. IT WILL BE
INTERESTING TO SEE WHICH...IF ANY...OF THESE PATTERNS THE MODELS
TREND TOWARD DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

[Ntxw]

MODELS ARE SHOWING A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF UNCERTAINTY BY NEXT
WEEKEND. THE GFS SUGGESTS A GRADUAL WARMING TREND TO NEAR OR
SLIGHTLY ABOVE NORMAL. THE CANADIAN HAS ANOTHER SNOW EVENT AND
ARCTIC INTRUSION NEXT WEEKEND. THE ECMWF HAS BACKED OFF ON ITS
VERY COLD FORECAST AROUND NEW YEARS DAY WITH LESS AMPLIFICATION OF
A SHORTWAVE TROUGH IN CANADA...BUT NOW IS SUGGESTING AN EXTREMELY
FAVORABLE SYNOPTIC SET UP FOR A SIBERIAN ORIGIN AIRMASS AND 1050
MB SURFACE HIGH TO DROP INTO THE PLAINS BY DAY 10-12. IT WILL BE
INTERESTING TO SEE WHICH...IF ANY...OF THESE PATTERNS THE MODELS
TREND TOWARD DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS.

And the model woes continues . I've gotten my yearly dose of snow that I can say we had snow this winter and with it being around Christmas at that (can't really ask for better). Anything extra is simply bonus. If anything I'd like to see something brew up for the Austin\San Antonio area as they've been the ones left out so far

[Portastorm]

The 12z NAM is a little more encouraging for a frozen precip type event for portions of northwest and west Texas ... as compared to previous runs.

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/nam/12/model_l.shtml

[srainhoutx]

The 12z NAM is a little more encouraging for a frozen precip type event for portions of northwest and west Texas ... as compared to previous runs.

http://www.nco.ncep.noaa.gov/pmb/nwprod/analysis/namer/nam/12/model_l.shtml

Kind of fits nicely with what we have been discussing, doesn't it. Cosgrove really nailed down some the 'finer details' in his article. The 'pump is being primed' so to speak for some interesting days ahead. Stepping down...

[srainhoutx]

12Z GFS is catching on to the trend the ECMWF suggested. Looks mighty cilly as we enter into the New Year all the way to the Rio Grande Valley/Northern MX. The trend continues with the 'stepping down' process. Interesting days ahead.

[gofrogs]

What do any of the other models besides the gfs say.

[mrgolf]

Hello everyone.This mrgolf from around memphis,tn.I joined last week and its a great forum here.I tried to look at the euro,nogaps,ukmet,canadian models on PSUEWALL site,but it hasnt updated the 0z runs for today.It still has the runs from 12z yesterday.Can someone help me with another link i may can go to look at the models for 0z.Thanks kevin.

[Portastorm]

And the model woes continues . I've gotten my yearly dose of snow that I can say we had snow this winter and with it being around Christmas at that (can't really ask for better). Anything extra is simply bonus. If anything I'd like to see something brew up for the Austin\San Antonio area as they've been the ones left out so far

Thanks Ntxw! So far ... compared to the rest of y'all the image below (Portastorm on the right) depicts what we in the Austin area have received so far this winter season:

[Ntxw]

Latest out of FW AFD. Wet bulbing, almost forgot about that

.LONG TERM/TUES AND BEYOND/...
ALL MED RANGE MODELS BEGIN LIFTING SRN STREAM SHORTWAVE DISTURBANCE
ACROSS MEXICO/W TX BIG BEND BY 12Z/DAYBREAK TUES...BEFORE DEVELOPING
A TX COASTAL DISTURBANCE JUST EAST OF BROWNSVILLE/CORPUS CHRISTI BY
TUES EVENING. MEANWHILE...LIFT AND COOLING OF LAYER BELOW 700 MB
LIKELY TO RESULT IN WET-BULB COOLING AND HAVE MAINTAINED MORE OF A
WINTRY MIXTURE OF RAIN/SLEET/SNOW THROUGH THE AFTERNOON AND EVENING
ACROSS NW HALF OF NORTH TEXAS. SOME DIFFERENCES ON MOISTURE AND
DEPTH OF COLD AIR...BUT ENOUGH CONFIDENCE TO CONTINUE WINTRY MIX
THROUGH TUES NIGHT TIME FRAME PER AVERAGE THICKNESSES VALUES OF
SEVERAL MODELS.

IT APPEARS DEEPER COLD AIR SHUNTS NORTH OF THE BORDER MOSTLY ON
WEDNESDAY...BUT A LITTLE WEARY OF THE COLUMN WARMING FULLY TO ABOVE
FREEZING. FOR NOW...WILL KEEP WEDNESDAY ALL RAIN...BUT AREAS NORTH
OF I-20 WILL NEED TO BE WATCHED FOR ANY COLD AIR INTRUSIONS BEHIND
DEPARTING COASTAL TROUGH. WE MAY GO AHEAD AND ISSUE A SPECIAL WX
STATEMENT/SPS TO FOREWARN OF THE POTENTIAL AND UNCERTAINTY ON
PRECIPITATION TYPE TUES/TUES NIGHT...AS MED RANGE MODELS APPEAR TO
AGREE ON TIMING OF SYSTEM AND DEVELOPMENT. IF NOT...WE`LL DEFINITELY
ENHANCE HAZARDOUS WX OUTLOOK.

[mrgolf]

Ntxw,the 12zecmwf didnt look to bad i didnt think.Everyone else can make their own assumptions.It shows a low in southern mississippi.

[Ntxw]

18z nam looks good for wintry fun for west\north Texas