opticsguy wrote:Is this air mass so shallow that it is being bottled up by the Caprock and the Llano? The panhandle doesn't seem to bet getting the coldest air or strongest winds.
That's a good point there. The upper cold matches the 500mb flow and the deep cold is up in the panhandle. But near the surface the cold is squeezed between higher ground of West Texas and the uprise in eastern Oklahoma known as the Ouachita Mountains. The shallower, dense cold air near the surface has no problem using this pathway despite guidance for days not allowing it to push south of the Okla/KS border. Thus the 20-40F busts in the mentioned regions.
SE ridge is also not letting it push much more eastward. 70s on the eastern seaboard today
I added the green layer option on the meso analysis to highlight the higher terrain
This is the second time this month the sequence has occurred this way