A Warm and Cold Winter Season

[TexasStooge]

Local weather a lesson in extremes

It's warm, it's cold, and premature spring stirring up allergies

By MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News

North Texas winters can be filled with surprises, and there's no real surprise in that.

But the last several weeks pushed the usual warm-cold cycles to another level. With warms notably warmer than usual – average temperatures were up 2 degrees in December and almost 10 so far in January – the colds, by comparison, feel even colder.

Snow before Christmas morphed into days of shorts-and-T-shirt weather followed by cold drizzle and then strong hints of spring.

"It has been warmer and colder," Troy Dungan, chief forecaster for WFAA-TV (Channel 8), said Monday. "And we have a mild El Niño, which usually means cooler and wetter, and it has been pretty wet."

The "Pineapple Express" has been rolling right across the country in the last few weeks, said Tommy Kircher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth.

"The storms hit the West Coast and come right in from California and right over us," he said.

Occasionally, though, the northern jet stream kicks in and sends down another dose of winter.

That's what will happen this week. Warm, cloudy days in the 70s will give way to another blast from the north, with overnight temperatures skidding toward 20 by the weekend.

A chance of thunderstorms precedes the arrival of the latest front Wednesday evening, and clearing skies will accompany the plunging temperatures, forecasters said.

But neither warm nor cold, wet nor dry promises relief from the sniffles that seem to afflict almost everyone this winter.

"The thing is, the warm weather helps the growth of all the things that can trigger allergies," said Dr. Rebecca Gruchalla, chief of allergy and immunology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. "Then we have so many perennial allergens, like mold."

Dr. Gruchalla said that things are only likely to get worse in the next few months.