Texas Winter 2014-2015

[TheProfessor]

As of right now it sounds like Wednesday could be another afternoon commute fiasco.

[dhweather]

GFS about the same several runs now, which you like to see - consistency.

NAM not nearly as bullish on precip as GFS.

RGEM will not be within striking distance until tonight. It handled last week extremely well. Eager to see what it opines.

[gboudx]

Update from jeff:

Cloudy, cool, and damp sums up the weather across the area this morning…and for much of this week.

Coastal surface trough continues to plague the area with fog and drizzle north of the trough and much warmer spring like temperatures south of the boundary. This feature pushed inland yesterday allowing Pearland and Angleton to reach the upper 70’s while Sugar Land remained in the 50’s and College Station in the mid 40’s. Overnight this trough axis and pushed back southward into the coastal waters with north winds in place across the entire region and temperatures running in the 40’s and lower 50’s. Not expecting much warm up today under drizzle, fog, and cloud cover. Warm air advection over top of the surface cold dome will keep the dreary weather locked in place all day.

Big changes transpire on Tuesday…for the best day of the week weather wise! Coastal warm front will rapidly surge inland flooding the area with mild air. Dewpoints and temperatures will sharply rise with the frontal passage with dewpoints pushing into the upper 60’s and temperatures the mid and upper 70’s. Warm dewpoints over the cold nearshore waters will likely result in dense sea fog formation. Drizzle and showers will move out of the area with the warm frontal passage and skies may even scatter out south of the warm front and north of the coastal sea fog bank.

Even bigger changes arrive on Wednesday. Another strong arctic cold front will plow across the region Wednesday afternoon resulting in rapidly falling temperatures. High temperatures in the 70’s will fall quickly into the 40’s and 30’s by evening. Freezing line will quickly advance into the region Wednesday night. Air mass ahead of the front will be moist, but likely capped off by warm mid level temperatures. Not expecting much in the way of severe weather given the warm sector air mass will likely have widespread cloud cover and little heating. Rain chances certainly increase with the frontal passage and continue into the post frontal air mass…which leads to the next concern.

Wednesday night/Thursday morning:
Strong arctic front will have moved into the Gulf of Mexico by Wednesday evening with strong cold air advection driving temperatures into the 30’s over much of the area. Strong winds will likely require wind advisories for at least the coastal counties with gust possibly up to 40mph which will drive wind chills into the 10’s and 20’s. Rain chances will linger behind the front as moisture overruns the surface arctic dome. Surface freezing line will move into the area Wednesday evening and likely reach as far south as a Brenham to Cleveland line (sound familiar). Light rain may change over to light freezing rain early Thursday across the northern 1/3rd of the area. Forecast soundings show mainly a freezing rain P-type, but might suggest some sleet mixed in also especially from College Station to Huntsville. Right now it appears the freezing line will remain north of Harris County and the precipitation will remain liquid. This air mass is certainly very cold and adjustments will likely be needed over the next few days.

Thursday-Sunday:
Yet another storm approaches from the SW US with the cold air locked in place. Temperature should warm safely above freezing, but it will continue to be cold and miserable with increasing chances for widespread drizzle, fog, and rain. Lows will range from the 30’s to highs only in the 40’s Thursday and Friday. In fact many locations may see highs only in the 30’s on Thursday. The late week forecast will likely have some additional adjustments in the coming days as the latest GFS has backed off greatly on the amount of rain in the weekend time period.

[TeamPlayersBlue]

Back from Playa del Carmen.... i didnt miss anything did I? ;P

[aggiecutter]

From the Shreveport NWS:

AS SURFACE HIGH SURGES SOUTH ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT...COULD SEE A MIX
OF WINTER PRECIPITATION ACROSS THE REGION. WITH 850 AND 700 MB
TROUGH LAGGING BEHIND COLD AIR SURFACE INTRUSION AND SUFFICIENT
MOISTURE IN SOUTHWEST FLOW ALOFT...COULD SEE A FREEZING RAIN
THREAT ALONG AND NORTH OF THE INTERSTATE 20 CORRIDOR ON WEDNESDAY
EVENING TRANSITIONING INTO A SLEET/SNOW MIX AFTER MIDNIGHT. AREAS
MAINLY SOUTH OF INTERSTATE 20 ALONG A LINE FROM LUFKIN TO MONROE
WILL SEE A TRANSITION FROM RAIN TO FREEZING RAIN AFTER MIDNIGHT.
AT THIS TIME COULD SEE ICE TOTALS AS HIGH AS A TENTH OF AN INCH
ACROSS SOUTHWEST ARKANSAS AND SOUTHEAST OKLAHOMA AND SNOW/SLEET
TOTALS FROM TWO TO FOUR INCHES ACROSS THESE SAME AREAS WITH LESSER
AMOUNTS FARTHER SOUTH.

[TexasF6]

Porta please post that sref run!

[aggiecutter]

3z SREF shows a potent and possibly dangerous winter storm for much of Texas later this week. If it comes close to verifying ... oh my!

I wish it would snow in Austin with this storm. I am sick and tired of getting out on dangerous snow covered roadways in the Texarkana area, so you can live vicariously through my snow videos and pictures.

[SouthernMet]

Porta please post that sref run!

The 9z has already initialized looking good for ice but very low qpf.

Nam also has very low QPF, but fwiw has been underestimating lately.

No WSW this package.

Meanwhile we wait for the king RGEM

[Ntxw]

The trend on the models has been too much of a positive tilted trough that isn't phased until further north and east. The Ukmet doesn't show much of an event as a result neither does the cmc and the GFS and Euro have backed away from significant qpf. If it's too positive a trough then it's just a quick hitting line that shuts off after cold air advection. Southern stream vorticity needs to come out before the northern stream comes in. Hopefully short range guidance can provide more insight.

[Portastorm]

3z SREF shows a potent and possibly dangerous winter storm for much of Texas later this week. If it comes close to verifying ... oh my!

I wish it would snow in Austin with this storm. I am sick and tired of getting out on dangerous snow covered roadways in the Texarkana area, so you can live vicariously through my snow videos and pictures.

Thank you for your support. It is appreciated.

Stay safe up there in your winter wonderland.

[Portastorm]

Porta please post that sref run!

Here ... check it out yourself ... although the 9z run is now complete.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/sref.php?run=latest&id=SREF_PMSL_1000-500_THK_BLW_

You can adjust what you're looking at by using the windows (draw down) at the top of the page.

[wxman57]

Here ... check it out yourself ... although the 9z run is now complete.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/sref.php?run=latest&id=SREF_PMSL_1000-500_THK_BLW_

You can adjust what you're looking at by using the windows (draw down) at the top of the page.

Looks like it's forecasting mostly a sleet and freezing rain event. Up to 10% chance of snow in some areas.

[Portastorm]

Here ... check it out yourself ... although the 9z run is now complete.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/sref.php?run=latest&id=SREF_PMSL_1000-500_THK_BLW_

You can adjust what you're looking at by using the windows (draw down) at the top of the page.

Looks like it's forecasting mostly a sleet and freezing rain event. Up to 10% chance of snow in some areas.

Yes sir, exactly ... and thus my concern about a potentially dangerous event for Austin. 0.10" of freezing rain shut down the city last year for a day. Getting 0.10 to 0.25" would obviously be worse. It appears to me, if I'm reading it right, that Austin would get somewhere between 0.10-0.25" of freezing rain followed by light amounts of sleet.

[Yukon Cornelius]

My wife's family is flying in from Wisconsin to Oklahoma City on Thursday morning and we will have to pick them up in OKC and drive them back here, hopefully it's not too bad, ice wise once we get back towards N. TX.

[Brent]

The CBS 11 met then didn't seem too impressed for DFW and points NW anyway "maybe some sleet"(most of it was east of the metro on his graphicast) and had most of the precip out before its cold enough

[Portastorm]

It's interesting how poorly the models have performed in the last few days regarding temperatures here in the Austin area within a scope of 36-48 hours. For example, the forecast for today from the overnight Saturday GFS run showed a high temperature of 51. Our local NWS office just revised the progged high today into the low 40s. This happened pretty much all weekend.

[wxman57]

12Z GFS soundings look like a sleet/freezing rain profile for The D-FW area and Austin. For the Houston area, it looks like more cold rain with possibly a few sleet pellets mixed in. A very shallow sub-freezing layer over Houston, perhaps between 1000 and 2000 ft is what the GFS is predicting.

[Brent]

It's interesting how poorly the models have performed in the last few days regarding temperatures here in the Austin area within a scope of 36-48 hours. For example, the forecast for today from the overnight Saturday GFS run showed a high temperature of 51. Our local NWS office just revised the progged high today into the low 40s. This happened pretty much all weekend.

It's been the same here in Dallas... we were supposed to be like well into the 50s by now... we're gonna be lucky to see 40 today.

40s yesterday wound up being mid 30s

Upper 30s Saturday wound up being 30 degrees lol

I'm gonna believe that 69 degrees tomorrow when I see it to say the least...

Finfrock on NBC 5 meanwhile expecting "icy roads and school closures"

Also this looks concerning:

[Ralph's Weather]

Just analyzed the last 4 runs of the GFS for my place and it consistently showed a line of .5-1" of rain Wed then maybe an inch of sleet/snow Thu morning. With SW flow and an approaching shortwave I would expect more than post-frontal precip than is shown. The models look to still have a lot of work to do to resolve Wed night.

[weatherdude1108]

Here ... check it out yourself ... although the 9z run is now complete.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/sref/sref.php?run=latest&id=SREF_PMSL_1000-500_THK_BLW_

You can adjust what you're looking at by using the windows (draw down) at the top of the page.

Looks like it's forecasting mostly a sleet and freezing rain event. Up to 10% chance of snow in some areas.

Yes sir, exactly ... and thus my concern about a potentially dangerous event for Austin. 0.10" of freezing rain shut down the city last year for a day. Getting 0.10 to 0.25" would obviously be worse. It appears to me, if I'm reading it right, that Austin would get somewhere between 0.10-0.25" of freezing rain followed by light amounts of sleet.

Oh I'm sure it will just be a cold rain event in the mid-30s with a few ice pellets for a tease.

If it does ice, it probably won't last long due to the ever-growing sun angle until we approach the Summer Solstice. However, I am not against the idea of having a second "inclement weather" ice late start (or day). We had like four or five last Winter season.