Texas Winter 2013-2014

[Big O]

He (JB) seems to suggest Plains and eastward as far as cold late in January into February.

[Rgv20]

Currently 83F outside, honestly after all that cool weather it feels pretty good outside!

[orangeblood]

As Ntxw has reinforced time and time again, the Pacific ocean is one of, if not, the biggest driver of North American weather - I think that's pretty obvious to most. If you look back over historical WPO/EPO indexes, prolonged Arctic Outbreaks and their severity are almost always correlated with the negative phases of these indexes. The negative WPO seems to correlate with severity due to the massive height rises over NE Asia into the Bering Sea opening up the Siberian Tundra Air to North America. The positive phase seems to cut off this extreme cold air and leaves a mix of Canadian and Pacific Air over the North American continent. While the negative EPO and its magnitude seems to be the common driver of delivering this severe cold, but if there isn't much cold air to deliver it doesn't seem to be as noticeable. Pay close attention to the WPO for the next Arctic Outbreak - its currently positive but the ensembles are beginning to trend negative towards the end of the month

The following post is NOT an official forecast and should not be used as such. It is just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. It is NOT endorsed by any professional institution including storm2k.org. For official information, please refer to NWS products

[Texas Snowman]

While trajectory remains to be seen, this is music to my ears:

@BigJoeBastardi: In any case winter is not over and unfortunately, weather as or more extreme is liable to show up again. Pattern is natural, predictable.

[Portastorm]

In his Saturday Summary, JB is advising of possible Arctic intrusion late January into February. While he is not always right, model data seems to be lining up in favor of return to cold and storminess late January. I hope this cheers you up, Porta. Wxman57, your control over the weather may be coming to an end. It is time to restore balance to the force.

Big O ... we shall see. Personally, I still don't see anything in the teleconnections or operational model runs or ensembles that get me excited in the least. I've seen some of the other posts about it here and I'm not sure I even agree with some of the assessments I've read. But hey, I could be wrong or clueless. It wouldn't be the first time. Just ask my wife!

Meanwhile today was absolutely fantastic weather-wise here in Austin. Outside of the dust cloud of cedar pollen which rested just above our collective heads, we had a Chamber of Commerce day here. Sunny, blue skies, low 70s. I'm fine with a few days of that as long as we get some real winter back!

[Texas Snowman]

@wfaaweather: Beautiful weather thru next week. It's not spring yet...some models say old man winter returns end of Jan/early Feb!

[Ntxw]

Portastorm is in some kind of trance/spell by the heat miser. I mean look at the GFS and ensembles they have completely changed tunes and now signaling a potential pattern change with retrograding ridge and -PNA/diving shortwave in the west! We must muster all things cold and bring Porta back to the good side! Operation search and rescue commence.

[Tireman4]

Portastorm is in some kind of trance/spell by the heat miser. I mean look at the GFS and ensembles they have completely changed tunes and now signaling a potential pattern change with retrograding ridge and -PNA/diving shortwave in the west! We must muster all things cold and bring Porta back to the good side! Operation search and rescue commence.

I swear, he got kidnapped by the Romulans and was forced to do time on their desert moon with no hope of Winter. We must collectively help him back to the snow moon.

[gpsnowman]

Portastorm needs a trip north period. In the winter 2014 future, if there is a snowstorm forecasted within two days of a 180 degree half circle from Abilene to Wichita Kansas to Jackson, Mississippi, Porta needs to be snownapped and brought to a highway motel and made to walk in the snow for meals for the abductors. Abductors would be kind of coarse, relying on the natural beauty of winter to make Porta snap out of his winter doldrums, cultivated by an evil meteoman from Houston. Ummmmm....I'm busy. Who wants to snownap Portastorm?

[TheProfessor]

Finally the models have some cold weather in sight.
The latest GFS(18:00) has North Texas below freezing most of Friday and all of Saturday!
Here's what it has for Friday.



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[BigB0882]

That is some really cold weather way down into Florida.

[wxman57]

The current GFS has temps dropping all the way down to 32 next Saturday in Dallas with a high only in the mid 50s. Yep, some pretty cold air coming down.

I see nothing in either the GFS or Euro ensembles to suggest anything even remotely close to last week's cold across Texas. And neither is suggesting much of a southern stream storm track through 16 days.

[Portastorm]

The current GFS has temps dropping all the way down to 32 next Saturday in Dallas with a high only in the mid 50s. Yep, some pretty cold air coming down.

I see nothing in either the GFS or Euro ensembles to suggest anything even remotely close to last week's cold across Texas. And neither is suggesting much of a southern stream storm track through 16 days.

Well at the risk of everyone here believing I've lost my mind to the Heat Miser, I do pick a bone or two of contention with the above post. I do see some "change" shown in the GFS operational and ensembles for very late in the period (like 12 days away) which suggests a better trajectory for bringing air (notice I didn't say "colder" as it's hard to tell about source region temps that far out) into the Southern Plains from the polar regions and a more active southern jet. In fact both the 0z and 6z GFS show a rather potent storm/low moving into the desert Southwest from the Pacific.

But ... boys and girls ... we're talking a long ways out here and who knows if the GFS even has a clue beyond seven days.

And just to reiterate, I never said winter was over. I do think we'll have some more opportunities very late this month and certainly in the first two weeks of February.

[wxman57]

Unfortunately (for me), none of the models is suggesting anything close to warm or hot weather across Texas the next two weeks. Northwesterly flow aloft continues to bring down cold fronts every 4-7 days. Not much to indicate any significant precip across Texas, though. I'm quite confident we've seen the coldest this winter has to offer already.

[orangeblood]

Like what I'm seeing on the long range ensembles, particularly with the highest height anomalies setting up along 150-160 W up over Alaska. This will give Shortwaves the chance to dig a bit further west across the desert southwest. Caspian Sea and Greenland Ridges are showing signs of coming back to life as well.

[South Texas Storms]

I don't care much for the cold, but I would really like a nice, widespread heavy rain event across much of Texas. It's been a pretty dry start to the year so far in central Texas. Hopefully the subtropical jet can get going and help bring us some good rain events soon.

[Portastorm]

I don't care much for the cold, but I would really like a nice, widespread heavy rain event across much of Texas. It's been a pretty dry start to the year so far in central Texas. Hopefully the subtropical jet can get going and help bring us some good rain events soon.

And it might just do that South Texas Storms ... has anyone looked at the MJO status today and the forecast ahead for the MJO? It's actually the most encouraging I've seen in a week or two. The MJO signal gets stronger and is forecast to move into Octants 7-8 in about 12-13 days (Jan. 25th and beyond).

For Texas, Octants 7-8 typically mean colder-than-normal temps and wetter-than-normal precip. With the PNA progged to stay positive by later in the month and signs that the EPO will go negative ... we could be back in business.

There ... see y'all?! I've not lost my mind. Yet.

[Ntxw]

I don't know about getting wetter, ENSO and SOI says no not yet and those are solid signals if you want rain. But I agree on the retrograding pattern we will lose the +PNA signal to better ridging further north and west.

[wxman57]

I'm not seeing much to suggest much precip across Texas for the next few weeks. NW flow aloft = dry.

[weatherdude1108]

Today in history, San Antonio received record snowfall. It was 1985. I was a youngster. it is one of the reasons I became fascinated with how weather works.

http://www.examiner.com/article/weather ... cs?cid=rss

"Meteorological events that happened on January 12th:

1985

The "Snowstorm of the Century" blasted southern Texas. San Antonio recorded more snow in a 24 hour period, 9 inches, than was received during any entire winter in he past 100 years. The palm trees were blanked with a total storm total of 13.5 inches. Del Rio measured 5.5 inches which was also their most snow ever in 24 hours as well as for any season."

http://www.kens5.com/news/remembering-w ... 95538.html

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bbM-dr_WfNg