TX winter wx thread: Spring-like pattern

[JenBayles]

I'm beginning to lose my mind going back and forth from the Winter Weather forum to the US Weather Forum to get info on this weekend's weather in SE TX. Forget the cold - it's time to worry about severe storms. I don't remember the last time I saw severe storms with tornadic potential forecast so far in advance. Yikes!

[gboudx]

Winter Storm Watches and Warnings are going up in the Abilene-Wichita Falls areas.

[jinftl]

Got friends heading to Corpus next weekend...they asked if i had any idea of weather....told them looks like temps near 80!!! Hooray!!!

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=crp&map.x=216&map.y=165

[Ed Mahmoud]

I just PM'd WxMan57 and requested his presence on this thread. We need professional help!

Wxman57 PM'd me this morning and assured me it would be far too warm for frozen/freezing precip in the Houston area this past weekend.

[Ed Mahmoud]

The sun is coming up earlier, and setting later. I would know this from the calendar, but I can confirm it from my morning and afternoon commute.


Time is slipping away.


But, IIRC, a year or two ago Waco had a dusting of snow on Easter weekend, and Easter is earlier this year than in recent years, and Athens, Greece, only 8º latitude further from the Equator just had a snowstorm, so there is still hope!

[jinftl]

but hanoi and honolulu are only 8 deg latitude south of houston...no snow there!!!

The sun is coming up earlier, and setting later. I would know this from the calendar, but I can confirm it from my morning and afternoon commute.


Time is slipping away.


But, IIRC, a year or two ago Waco had a dusting of snow on Easter weekend, and Easter is earlier this year than in recent years, and Athens, Greece, only 8º latitude further from the Equator just had a snowstorm, so there is still hope!

[Ed Mahmoud]

but hanoi and honolulu are only 8 deg latitude south of houston...no snow there!!!

The sun is coming up earlier, and setting later. I would know this from the calendar, but I can confirm it from my morning and afternoon commute.


Time is slipping away.


But, IIRC, a year or two ago Waco had a dusting of snow on Easter weekend, and Easter is earlier this year than in recent years, and Athens, Greece, only 8º latitude further from the Equator just had a snowstorm, so there is still hope!

Well, that 8º makes them 16º South of Athens. But that pic is of Galveston Island after the 2004 Christmas Eve Miracle snow, so HOU is definitely at the right latitude for big snowstorms.

Admit it, you're jealous that that you live in Florida, where you skip straight from Autumn to Spring. Unlike Houston, that experiences all four seasons. Ok, Minneapolis experiences all four seasons as well, but our cold weather comes in managebly short intervals. We're not bored of winter before it ends. Hence, people like EWG on the board looking at the 348 hour 6Z GFS or whatever for the co-location of precip and the 0ºC 850 mb isotherm. Don't see any of our Minnesota readers doing that.

[jasons2k]

Ed, they can look for the magic matchup but the truth is that it's a very rare event.

I went to college with people who grew-up Houston and had never seen snow.

I've seen people put-up statistics saying it should snow in Houston every X number of years based on data since whenever. The problem is that many of those "snow days" were part of one event in a given year and it taints the statistics. Same thing with freezes. It's not really reflective of our climate to take 20 hard freezes from 1899, 1983, and 1989 and claim we should see temps in the teens every 4 years. It doesn't really work that way.

Anyway, even though it was only 40F this morning there was a lot of frost on the rooftops.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Ed, they can look for the magic matchup but the truth is that it's a very rare event.

I went to college with people who grew-up Houston and had never seen snow.

I've seen people put-up statistics saying it should snow in Houston every X number of years based on data since whenever. The problem is that many of those "snow days" were part of one event in a given year and it taints the statistics. Same thing with freezes. It's not really reflective of our climate to take 20 hard freezes from 1899, 1983, and 1989 and claim we should see temps in the teens every 4 years. It doesn't really work that way.

Anyway, even though it was only 40F this morning there was a lot of frost on the rooftops.

A boy can dream, can't he?

[jinftl]

Or move north if possible...or at least plan a getaway to a snowy locale for a few days each winter.

But this video of Houston in Dec 1989 (to name just one snowfall occurrence) shows that anything is possible...might be getting late for it to snow this winter in Houston, but only 10 months until next winter!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REw7TCJnHso&feature=related

Ed, they can look for the magic matchup but the truth is that it's a very rare event.

I went to college with people who grew-up Houston and had never seen snow.

I've seen people put-up statistics saying it should snow in Houston every X number of years based on data since whenever. The problem is that many of those "snow days" were part of one event in a given year and it taints the statistics. Same thing with freezes. It's not really reflective of our climate to take 20 hard freezes from 1899, 1983, and 1989 and claim we should see temps in the teens every 4 years. It doesn't really work that way.

Anyway, even though it was only 40F this morning there was a lot of frost on the rooftops.

A boy can dream, can't he?

[Texas Snowman]

JB is talking about a wild period of weather coming up, particularly in the eastern U.S.

He's even showing the analog from the March 1993 Super Storm.

As memory recalls, here in N. Texas we missed the snow (it started well east of where I live near Lake Texoma) but it was a wild, wild blue norther. Winds were HOWLING out of the north and the temp dropped like a rock behind front. Went to Lake Texoma and it looked like the Gulf as a strong tropical storm was coming ashore (except for the steam coming off the water! )

JB's been saying all winter that it would be a book-end winter, cold and snowy to start and potentially cold and snowy to end.

Maybe March will be one to remember for portions of Texas.

Tx Snowman

[Texas Snowman]

BTW, JB is also talking about the potential for a colder period of weather over next decade or so as the Atlantic Decadal Occilation continues to slide downward.

Maybe in 10 or 15 years, we'll have several more memorable winter weather events to talk about.

Tx Snowman

[jinftl]

is there a GFS model that goes out 87,600 hours (10 years)... it shows the rain/snow line on the west side of Houston!!!

BTW, JB is also talking about the potential for a colder period of weather over next decade or so as the Atlantic Decadal Occilation continues to slide downward.

Maybe in 10 or 15 years, we'll have several more memorable winter weather events to talk about.

Tx Snowman

[Johnny]

Jasons, I actually hit 33.8 here at my house yesterday morning. I wasn't expecting that!

Jeff mentioned something about next week being a lot more colder down here. A lot of stuff is blooming around my house but my pecan tree hasn't started yet. When my pecan tree starts to put on buds, then I know spring has really arrived. With that said, winter isn't over yet. I do believe Ol Man Winter has something else up his sleeve for us here in the deep south.

[Johnny]

AFTER THIS SYSTEM A QUICK RETURN OF ONSHORE WINDS WILL OCCUR AS A
WEAK FRONT MOVES INTO THE AREA SUNDAY. THE NEXT BIG SYSTEM WILL
OCCUR EARLY NEXT WEEK. THE GFS IS NOT FORECASTING AS MUCH PRECIP
AS WOULD BE EXPECTED WHILE THE ECMWF IS MUCH COLDER THAN THE GFS.
FELT IT BEST TO WAIT A FEW MORE MODEL RUNS BEFORE MAKING DRASTIC
CHANGES AND KEPT CLOSE TO A BLEND OF THE CURRENT FORECAST AND THE
SURROUNDING OFFICE FORECASTS FOR DAYS 6 THROUGH 7.

[gboudx]

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORT WORTH TX
245 PM CST TUE FEB 26 2008


...ELEVATED FIRE DANGER WILL CONTINUE WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY...


.DISCUSSION...
THE UPPER TROUGH WILL MOVE EAST OF THE SOUTHERN PLAINS BY WEDNESDAY
WITH THE NEXT TROUGH DEEPENING A LITTLE FURTHER NORTH OVER THE UPPER
MIDWEST WITH A WEAK UPPER LOW BRANCHING OFF OVER NORTHERN MEXICO FOR
THE WEEKEND. A THIRD...STRONG UPPER TROUGH WILL MOVE INTO THE
SOUTHERN PLAINS SUNDAY/MONDAY WITH A STRONG COLD FRONT MONDAY AND
GOOD CHANCE OF RAIN BEFORE EXITING EAST. THE PAST SEVERAL RUNS OF
THE GFS HAVE HINTED AT SOME WINTRY PRECIPITATION IN THE COLD AIR
BEHIND MONDAY/S FRONT. GIVEN THAT THIS EVENT IS DAY 7...WILL NOT
COMMIT TO IT YET.

Yes, because we know that as Monday gets closer, it'll warm up too much for wintry precip.

[Ed Mahmoud]

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORT WORTH TX
245 PM CST TUE FEB 26 2008


...ELEVATED FIRE DANGER WILL CONTINUE WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY...


.DISCUSSION...
THE UPPER TROUGH WILL MOVE EAST OF THE SOUTHERN PLAINS BY WEDNESDAY
WITH THE NEXT TROUGH DEEPENING A LITTLE FURTHER NORTH OVER THE UPPER
MIDWEST WITH A WEAK UPPER LOW BRANCHING OFF OVER NORTHERN MEXICO FOR
THE WEEKEND. A THIRD...STRONG UPPER TROUGH WILL MOVE INTO THE
SOUTHERN PLAINS SUNDAY/MONDAY WITH A STRONG COLD FRONT MONDAY AND
GOOD CHANCE OF RAIN BEFORE EXITING EAST. THE PAST SEVERAL RUNS OF
THE GFS HAVE HINTED AT SOME WINTRY PRECIPITATION IN THE COLD AIR
BEHIND MONDAY/S FRONT. GIVEN THAT THIS EVENT IS DAY 7...WILL NOT
COMMIT TO IT YET.

Yes, because we know that as Monday gets closer, it'll warm up too much for wintry precip.

Perhaps that is what they said about Christmas Eve 2004 and the Miracle Snow!

[gboudx]

Perhaps that is what they said about Christmas Eve 2004 and the Miracle Snow!

I don't know about that. But I do know that the 3 or 4 potential wintry precip events we might've had this winter, there was a swing and a miss. Of course, I don't think snow was forecasted last early April either. But there it was, as my oldest son was playing a soccer game, it started snowing.

In summary, "we'll see".

[Texas Snowman]

I think it was yesterday that Joe B said on his Accuweather blog that there could be a strong arctic attack middle of next week into much of the nation.

I have seen winter weather events here in N. Texas as late as about March 20, but I'm rapidly losing hope for a snow event this year.

If it's not going to snow, one or two more cold fronts to burn the rest of my wood up, then on to spring and bass fishing weather.

Tx Snowman

[Sambucol]

What can we expect in temperatures in the Houston area after the front passes next week?