2008-09 Texas Winter Weather Thread

[Ed Mahmoud]

DAL and FTW freezing rain, DFW plain old ordinary and miserable cold rain...

[Portastorm]

It's just a cold rain on Bevo here in AUS right now.

[Ed Mahmoud]

DFW now reporting freezing rain, but it is 33ºF, so I can't see it being too bad. Dewpoint -4ºC and a NNW wind of 10 mph will hopefully keep bringing in the drier surface air to get the temps down some more, but at this point, is is a waste? I doubt many school districts cancelled, and the school bus sliding into a parked car on the way home or whatever is potentially dangerous.

WFAA-TV web site confirms the bad news...

No Closings reported as of 9:15am on 1/05/2009

[Ed Mahmoud]

DFW down to 33ºF, dewpoint is 28ºF, meaning some room for evaporative cooling, and NorthWest winds of 10 mph should continue advecting in cool dry air, so y'all still may get lucky.

Dallas-Love has had .11 inches of freezing rain with a constant 30ºF temperature the last three hours, but the near 80º temps Saturday probably means surface roads are not icing. The good news, with a constant dewpoint of 24ºF, Denton has actually dropped 2ºF, from 30 to 28ºF with freezing rain at 9 am, implying continued weak cold air advection.




If I drove a fairly new car with a clean body, say, for example, like my 2007 Chevy Impala purchased at Munday Chevrolet in 2006, I might try to leave work early at lunch, before main lane icing can begin, and while traffic is still light.

That is my unprofessional and unofficial advice to people driving nice cars. I'd stay at work and take my chances with a 1999 Camry, but would drive slow enough to reduce my chances of serious injury if I did skid into a bridge abutment.

[gboudx]

Road signs and traffic lights have icicle's on them over here in the Richardson/Plano/Murphy part of the world. No icing on bridges yet, but you can see the grass in the median is iced over. Just a matter of time I guess. I'll evaluate throughout the day and make the decision to leave early if needed.

I hate this crap.

WFAA has a neat radar called, "MyOwnRadar". If you click the "Winterize" button, you can see where the freezing rain is occurring. Not sure how accurate it is, but the TV mets were hyping this up.

http://www.wfaa.com/weather/myownradar/dfw/

[Ed Mahmoud]

Road signs and traffic lights have icicle's on them over here in the Richardson/Plano/Murphy part of the world. No icing on bridges yet, but you can see the grass in the median is iced over. Just a matter of time I guess. I'll evaluate throughout the day and make the decision to leave early if needed.

I hate this crap.

WFAA has a neat radar called, "MyOwnRadar". If you click the "Winterize" button, you can see where the freezing rain is occurring. Not sure how accurate it is, but the TV mets were hyping this up.

http://www.wfaa.com/weather/myownradar/dfw/

Its show plain rain in all of Dallas County. As of 10 am, while temp has warmed from 30º to 32ºF at Love, DAL still reporting light freezing rain.

[CaptinCrunch]

Still seeing light freezing rain/drizzel here in FTW, I work at the I-35/I-30 interchange (just across from WFAA's traffic cam) and 35 looks good, with traffic taking it easy on the overpasses.

As Gboudx was saying just about anything metal and above ground level has a light ice coating.

[Ed Mahmoud]

NWS says the icing is soon over around DFW

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORT WORTH TX
1023 AM CST MON JAN 5 2009

.UPDATE...
FREEZING TEMPERATURES HAVE SPREAD AS FAR SOUTH AS TEMPLE AND WACO
AND AS FAR EAST AS CORSICANA. NEWEST MODEL DATA INDICATES WE WILL
HAVE WET-BULBED AS MUCH AS WE CAN OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS
AND TEMPS WILL ACTUALLY RISE A COUPLE DEGREES THIS AFTERNOON AS
LOW LEVEL THERMAL PROFILES INCREASE AHEAD OF THE NEXT SHORTWAVE.
ALSO...CONTINUED RAIN WILL BEGIN DRAGGING DOWN WARMER AIR
INDICATED AS A WARM NOSE ON THIS MORNINGS SOUNDING.

THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS IS WHEN TEMPS WILL BE LOWEST AND WHEN WE
MAY SEE THE MOST PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS EVENT. SO FAR
IMPACTS HAVE BEEN LIGHT WITH ICING AND ACCIDENTS LIMITED TO
BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES. THE ADVISORY END TIME OF NOON FOR THE
METROPLEX SHOULD WORK OUT WELL...WHILE AREAS TO THE NORTH WILL BE
UNDER AN ADVISORY UNTIL 4 PM.

HAVE ADJUSTED TEMPS AND WEATHER GRIDS ACCORDING TO CURRENT TRENDS
AND THE LATEST THINKING. TEMPERATURES OVERNIGHT TONIGHT WILL
GENERALLY BE ABOVE FREEZING WITH A COLD RAIN CONTINUING INTO
TOMORROW MORNING AS UPPER TROUGH SWINGS EAST. SH/13

&&

[jinftl]

Back to Spring-like weather by mid-week in Dallas, than a return to more seasonably cold temps by the weekend:


NWS Forecast for: Dallas TX
Issued by: National Weather Service Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Last Update: 10:27 am CST Jan 5, 2009
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Afternoon: Rain. High near 36. North wind between 5 and 10 mph becoming calm. Chance of precipitation is 90%.

Tonight: Rain, mainly before midnight. Low around 36. Calm wind becoming south around 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%.

Tuesday: A 20 percent chance of rain before noon. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 56.

Tuesday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 39.

Wednesday: Sunny, with a high near 66. Southwest wind between 5 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.

Wednesday Night: Clear, with a low around 43. South southwest wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Thursday: Sunny, with a high near 70. West wind 5 to 10 mph becoming east.

Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 45. South southeast wind between 5 and 10 mph.

Friday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 70. South wind between 5 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph.

Friday Night: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 40.

Saturday: Partly sunny, with a high near 52.

Saturday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 33.

Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 52.

[CaptinCrunch]

It's funny how the local news media (weatherman) don't hype a possible record breaking day of 30+ degree temps above normal, but just let the thought of a sleet pellet or a 3 inch icecycle happen, and you would think the second coming of Jesus was about to happen. Granted it we haven't seen a old fashion winter here in the DFW area since 83, but please don't make this lite ice event, if that's what you want to call it be the end all of end all's. Seeing snow along the Gulf Coast and into NO, now that's news worth talking about.

As it stands now, I'm not seeing anything in the 10 to 14 day future that would bring about a major cold snap or frozen precip into NTX, at least not at this time I don't

[gboudx]

It's funny how the local news media (weatherman) don't hype a possible record breaking day of 30+ degree temps above normal, but just let the thought of a sleet pellet or a 3 inch icecycle happen, and you would think the second coming of Jesus was about to happen. Granted it we haven't seen a old fashion winter here in the DFW area since 83, but please don't make this lite ice event, if that's what you want to call it be the end all of end all's. Seeing snow along the Gulf Coast and into NO, now that's news worth talking about.

As it stands now, I'm not seeing anything in the 10 to 14 day future that would bring about a major cold snap or frozen precip into NTX, at least not at this time I don't

Agreed. They love to overhype the weather here. McCauley on channel 8 is one of the worst at it.

BTW, here's a couple pics I snapped with my cellphone when I went out for a sandwich.

[TrekkerCC]

Agreed. They love to overhype the weather here. McCauley on channel 8 is one of the worst at it.

BTW, here's a couple pics I snapped with my cellphone when I went out for a sandwich.

Nice pictures! It is 31F here right now. We got some light freezing drizzle right now, and rain . However, more substantial precipitation is coming in from the west (on the radar). From the Ft. Worth discussion: "...CONTINUED RAIN WILL BEGIN DRAGGING DOWN WARMER AIS INDICATED AS A WARM NOSE ON THIS MORNINGS SOUNDING." Also, it appears the temperatures will slowly rise up during the day. This is what saved the Dallas area during the January 2007 ice storm, the warm air brought down by the rain kept the temperatures above freezing until a reinforcing shot of arctic air came down. By the time the arctic air came down, the event was mostly over, and the Dallas area did not get the icing the Ft. Worth area did. Of course, a couple of days later, we had the surprising snow event (.25"-1" of snow) around the DFW meteoplex.

I do somewhat agree with your comment about Steve McCauley, as he does occasionally overhype the weather. I do want to qualify the above comment as I think he shows in detail what he thinks, as I remember he put up graphics about the McFarland signature (and explain what it means) whenever the models were hinting about the possibility. I never see the other local weather forecasters do it. He seems to take joy in explaining the weather, which is very refreshing. He does tend (occasionally) to over-hype long range events which do not come to fruition, but I do like him showing what might happen (even if it changes).

[iorange55]

Wah wah wah. I love seeing the weatherman "overhype" and get excited about the weather, that's why I love Steve you can tell he actually likes the weather. I think the chance of a ice event is more rare and exciting here than telling everyone "Hey its going to be extra hot for the next month."


There is nothing I hate more than a boring weatherman.



By the way I measured one icicle that was at least 4 inches...so yeah.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Love, Meachem and Alliance all continue with very light rain and sub-freezing temps, and DFW stubbornly refuses to warm or cool from 33ºF.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Kind of hard to tell for sure off the free Euro images with thicknesses and 850 mb temps and relative humidities available from the PSU e-Wall site, but it doesn't look impossible for freezing rain near DFW with a shallow wedge of cold air with warmer humid air over-riding with an approaching disturbance.

[gboudx]

Wah wah wah. I love seeing the weatherman "overhype" and get excited about the weather, that's why I love Steve you can tell he actually likes the weather. I think the chance of a ice event is more rare and exciting here than telling everyone "Hey its going to be extra hot for the next month."


There is nothing I hate more than a boring weatherman.

This is getting off-topic. TV mets have a responsibility to the public to present the weather. Where, imo, McCauley gets off-track is when he starts talking about extreme weather events beyond 5-7 days. I've seen the guy mention a possible arctic intrusion that shows up on the 300+ hour GFS. That's irresponsible as he should know better, and he doesn't need to inform the public of that until it gets closer. Pete doesn't do it and neither did Troy, who I add are the current and the former senior mets on WFAA. I do like Steve explaining things, but quite a few times he's explaining things that "could happen" beyond 5-7 days. Most times, it never happens and you never see him explain why it didn't. Pete needs to reign him in a bit.

[Ed Mahmoud]

DFW has warmed to 34º, but despite letting the advisory in the Metroplex expire at Noon, it remains sub-freezing at Love and Meachem, and Meachem has recorded .30 inches of rain since the freezing rain episode began.

Radar shows heaviest precip is pushing to the East, winds that were from the North or Northwest near 10 mph are almost calm, and dewpoints are approaching the air temperatures which are almost to freezing, so this event is about over.

But it lasted in Tarrant County two hours past the expiration of the advisory.

[srainhoutx]

12Z GFS @ 192 hours show an "interesting" setup...hmmm...

[Ed Mahmoud]

That seems to suggest the cold surface air is just a tad too late for most of us in Texas.


Of course, this far out, that is close enough to a possible Winter Weather scenario to keep an eye on. And the 204 hour GFS looks interesting as well, especially towards the Hill Country.

[somethingfunny]

The roads were alright last night for the most part, but the tips were terrible. Go figure. Come pick the pizza up next time it ices.