SW LA/SE TX Winter 2013-2014

[Jagno]

OMG is this really true?

LOUISIANA - STATE OF EMERGENCY DECLARED - EXTREME COLD

Jan 24, 2014
(video)

Jindal declares state of emergency due to cold weather

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) -

Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a proclamation Friday morning declaring a state of emergency for the state of Louisiana.

The proclamation was a result of the extreme cold weather conditions that threaten the lives and property of the citizens of the state.

http://www.wafb.com/story/24539966/jind ... ld-weather

This is so that they can open the shelters to the homeless and those of us who have been without electricity since last night in sub freezing temperatures. I have a business but the folks down in Cameron parish have been out the longest and have been meddling here in the city all day and the hotels are full of people without lights, water or heat.

[SaskatchewanScreamer]

This is so that they can open the shelters to the homeless and those of us who have been without electricity since last night in sub freezing temperatures. I have a business but the folks down in Cameron parish have been out the longest and have been meddling here in the city all day and the hotels are full of people without lights, water or heat.

Now I and others not from down there can understand why that declaration was made (I actually thought it was because of the roads there...but using the wording extreme cold had me flummoxed ).

I forget how different your government works from up here! Saskatoon recently had power go out, for 6 hours, when they were having temps in the low-20's Celcius with -30's or 40's windchill but opening shelters, like schools, would be a city hall decision not a provincial one.

[CYCLONE MIKE]

Well unfortunately the 18z gfz run says goodbye to the gulf coast/east coast storm. Shows nothing. Good news is that it did the same thing with our current one that's wrapping up now. When bigb first posted it some 5 days ago it showed a winter mess for us only to take it away run after run until Wednesday night. So not going to get all depressed just yet. Maybe the cmc will make me happy.

[BigB0882]

I wouldn't worry too much about the GFS right now. Just one run and it has come and gone since it first showed it. If all the other models start taking it away then I would think maybe it was a phantom storm. Just to keep ourselves from being too upset, don't forget that it isn't often that a deep south winter storm is seen 5 days out and comes true. There are more chances that they are wrong than right or they may be right but have the areas who get the snow wrong. We almost want it to disappear in the models and then come back a day before.

[vbhoutex]

27f with the precipitation over here in W Houston. Temp not budging, so I am not expecting the temp to get above 32f today. Ice, ice baby everywhere with multiple road closures and multiple accidents all over the Houston metro area.

We actually made it up to 35f today so most of the ice is gone, thank goodness. Now watching for early next week.

[BigB0882]

Our high must have been about 28 or 29. Everything frozen solid.

[CYCLONE MIKE]

Yep? The high made it all the way up to a balmy 29 today. Just came in from taking the dogs out and all the trees are glistening with ice from the street lights and everything besides the roads are covered in a sheet if ice. Hard to believe its going to be in the upper 50's tomorrow and all this will be gone. We had about 18-19 hrs of straight sleet and/or freezing rain and depending on when we hit above freezing tomorrow around 32 hrs below freezing come 8:00 in morning. Pretty amazing for south LA.

[Jagno]

NWS here predicts another 20% change of sleet and snow on Tuesday night. Our last 20% sleet/snow forecast jumped to 70% so I'll just stay tuned.

[CYCLONE MIKE]

Man if we could only trust the Nam. By 72 hr shows winter precip starting to break out in LA, then by the end of run at 84 hr The southern half of LA is covered. The 06z gfs has freezing rain and snow skirting the coast again, whereas last night was nothing. Last night's cmc looked darn good to

[CYCLONE MIKE]

I didn't realize how much ice actually accumulated on the trees. Just went outside and looks like its raining. The sun is out and bright but all you see is water falling from the trees.

[PTrackerLA]

12z NAM shows 5-8 inches of snow across southern Louisiana . This would probably be mainly ice. Will be interesting to watch how this unfolds. I've been out of town for this event but wouldn't mind seeing some action next week. Hopefully not much ice because it really caused a lots of problems back home.

[BigB0882]

Geez, too bad we can't trust the 300+ hour GFS. It shows TONS of winter weather. Almost 1 inch of QPF with freezing temps. Not totally sure about upper layers so don't know the P type but it will be wintry! That is crazy. Last run of GFS had us in the 70s. lol I know it won't happen but it would be nice.

The 12z GFS also shows us with just a little QPF Monday. It is before temps fall but maybe it is coming around to the NAM slowly in slinging enough moisture up our way? The NAM is good and I hope it is right!

[southerngale]

27f with the precipitation over here in W Houston. Temp not budging, so I am not expecting the temp to get above 32f today. Ice, ice baby everywhere with multiple road closures and multiple accidents all over the Houston metro area.

We actually made it up to 35f today so most of the ice is gone, thank goodness. Now watching for early next week.

We stayed in the 20s all day, with a brief bump to 30°. Nothing started melting until today. Nearly 2 days below freezing. I took some pics of the ice and little bit of snow. I'll try to post them later.

And now NWS LCH has sleet forecast for Tuesday night. I haven't seen any models, so not sure how likely that is.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

[PTrackerLA]

18z NAM shows about 3" of snow for Lafayette with more towards the coast. Around 7" for New Orleans. Lol.

Bring it!

[vbhoutex]

Jeff Lindner's latest email:

Nice warm up over the past 24 hours underway today with mainly sunny skies and returning southerly winds.

Warm up will be short lived and another arctic boundary will be plowing through the state by Monday brining another round of cold temperatures.

Upper air pattern remains locked in place with a deep trough over the eastern US and ridge over the western US which continues to send cold arctic air out of NW Canada southward into the plains and Midwest and then toward the east coast. TX is on the western edge of this trough and a slight buckle as seen Thursday will send a piece of these very cold air masses a little bit further south and west across the state. This looks to happen again by early next week with another arctic boundary moving down the plains and off the TX coast.

Expect the boundary to reach the area Monday and push off the coast Monday afternoon. Temperatures will warm into the upper 60’s on Sunday and highs on Monday will be prior to the front and then quickly fall into the 30’s and 40’s behind the boundary with another bout of strong north winds. Temperatures by Tuesday morning look to be freezing or below across nearly all of the area.

Precipitation Chances:

Up until last night this front looked mostly dry with just an increase in clouds, but recent model guidance is now suggesting a piece of energy may drop into the area around Baja and attempt to push moisture northward into the cold air. This brings into question yet again the potential for a mix of winter precipitation starting late Monday into early Tuesday and possibly lasting into late Wednesday. Forecast models are not in good agreement at all on if moisture can push back into the region fighting against the southward push of dry cold arctic air. What is concerning is that yesterday none of the models were suggesting any precipitation at all in the cold air and now today they are all to varying degrees trying to push moisture back into the region from the SSW. Much will likely depend on how the piece of energy near Baja is handled. A more cut-off and stalled piece of energy would likely keep lift and moisture out of the area while a more progressive system would bring moisture and lift back into the cold air. Not enough confidence in either solution at this point to attempt to side one way or the other.

Given the broad spectrum of possibilities at this point and the very low confidence think the best course of action is to lean toward the drier solution and await additional model runs to see if the “wetter” trend holds or increases….if so winter precipitation and potential accumulation will have to be closely examined for the Tuesday-Wednesday period as it appears temperatures will be cold enough to support a mixture of P-types. A wait and see approach for the next 24 hours.

Note:

Model liquid accumulations were on the low side for the last event (Thursday-Friday). Rain gages showed anywhere from .30-.50 of an inch of liquid with ice/sleet accumulations of around .05 to .15 of an inch. Luckily the temperature was above freezing during a good part of the rainfall on Thursday evening or icing would have been much more significant. As proven it only takes a very small amount of ice on roadways to cause really big problems.

Snowfall rations across our northern counties matched very well with the liquid to solid relationship. Amounts averaged 1-2 inches with a couple of 3-4 inch amounts around Lake Livingston. Interestingly the forecast models suggested the greatest band of precip. would be along the I-10 and US 59 corridors when in reality the best banding ended up from College Station to Livingston in an area where it appeared before the event too much dry air would be in place.

[CYCLONE MIKE]

Well unless this goes poof we are going to be looking at what looks to be a major winter storm for these parts. Our local nws has a good discussion about last nights model runs but of note they are leaning with the more conservative models for accumulation, euro and ukmet. Disregarded the Nam and only using a blend of the gfs which is strange because the gfs did the best for our last one, while the euro was dry. Says they are leaning to the side of caution but if the shortwave comes out stronger will be in a serious situation. This could be big.

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
352 AM CST SUN JAN 26 2014

...IMPACTFUL WINTER WEATHER IS POSSIBLE TUESDAY AND TUESDAY NIGHT...

.SHORT TERM...
TODAY SHOULD BE CLOSER TO NORMAL HIGHS WITH ONSHORE FLOW BRINGING
A STEADY INCREASE IN LOW LEVEL MOISTURE AND CLOUDINESS THROUGHOUT
THE DAY. MEANWHILE...ARCTIC AIR MASS TAKING SHAPE OVER THE CANADIAN
ROCKIES THAT WILL BE ADVANCING RAPIDLY SOUTHWARD MONDAY. FRONTAL
FORCING AND FOCUS SHOULD ERUPT SHOWERS OVER THE AREA MONDAY
AFTERNOON FOLLOWED BY SIGNIFICANT COOLING HEADING INTO MONDAY
NIGHT. STRONG COLD AIR ADVECTION WILL LIKELY PENETRATE WELL INTO
THE CENTRAL GULF TO ESTABLISH A WELL DEFINED ISENTROPIC PLANE
WEDGE BACK INTO THE GULF STATES. THIS SETS THE STAGE FOR WHAT
SHOULD BE IMPACTFUL WEATHER IMPLICATIONS FOR TUESDAY.

.LONG TERM...
TUESDAY/TUESDAY NIGHT...GAINING CONFIDENCE IN MODEL GUIDANCE
INDICATIONS OF ISENTROPIC LIFT INDUCED PRECIPITATION COMING IN
VARIOUS FORMS DEPENDING ON LOW LEVEL TEMPERATURE PROFILES THROUGH
THE COLUMN. A THOROUGH REVIEW OF BUFKIT SOUNDINGS FOR THE AREA
USING BOTH THE GFS AND NAM MODELS INDICATE WINTER PRECIPITATION
OUTCOMES WITH A COLD RAIN EVAPORATIONALLY COOLING INTO SLEET AND
EVENTUALLY FREEZING RAIN ACROSS SOUTH LOUISIANA INTO COASTAL
MISSISSIPPI. THE GREATER CONCERNS APPEAR TO BE THE PARISHES NEAR
AND BELOW THE TIDAL LAKES WHERE SOUNDING PROFILES ARE MORE
SUITABLE FOR TRANSITIONAL PRECIPITATION TYPES. FARTHER NORTH ONE
GOES INTO THE DEEPER COLD AIR A CLEANER TRANSITION TO SNOW SEEMS
PLAUSIBLE BUT COINCIDING WITH WHAT SHOULD BE MUCH LOWER COLUMNAR
MOISTURE TO WORK WITH. THE NAM IS THE HEAVIER HANDED MODEL AND WAS
DISCOUNTED AT THIS TIME FOR QPF AMOUNTS...THOUGH SOME
CONSIDERATIONS FOR POTENTIAL HIGHER AMOUNTS MAY BE PRUDENT GIVEN
THE INDICATED STRONG OMEGA STRUCTURES THE MODELS ARE DEPICTING
OVER THE ISENTROPIC LIFT LAYER...ALWAYS A CONCERNING FACTOR. IN
COORDINATION WITH THE HPC UNIT OF WPC AND SURROUNDING OFFICES THIS
MORNING...WILL GO CLOSER THE THE ECMWF/UKMET AND SOME GFS
COMPROMISE OF LESSER QPF BUT STILL IMPACTFUL ACCUMULATIONS TO
CAUSE ISSUES ACROSS THE FORECAST AREA. DURING THE TUE/TUE NIGHT
TIME-FRAME...DEPICTING THE WEATHER ELEMENTS IN HOURLY INCREMENTS TO
TRY TO PAINT A PICTURE OF EVOLUTION OF TRANSITIONS TIED CLOSELY TO
HOURLY TEMPERATURE TRENDS...WHICH WILL BE CRUCIAL IN DEPICTING
CHANGEOVER TO FREEZING RAIN. THIS MAY BE BEST VIEWED IN METEOGRAM
DISPLAYS FOR LOCATION OF INTEREST. WAS CAUTIOUS TO DEPICT ICE/SNOW
ACCUMULATIONS TO TOTAL NO MORE THAN 0.10 INCH THROUGH WED MORNING
IN LINE WITH HPC GRAPHICS...BUT NOTE THAT GETTING 0.25 INCH
COATINGS MAY STILL BE IN THE CARDS IF THE CAUSATIVE SHORT-WAVE
THAT EJECTS FROM MEXICO TO INDUCE THE ISENTROPIC LIFT BECOMES A
BIT MORE ROBUST. FROM A PRODUCT ISSUANCE STANDPOINT...WILL ISSUE A
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT TO DETAIL EXPECTATIONS FOR
TUESDAY/TUESDAY NIGHT GIVEN IT WILL BE THE FIFTH FORECAST PERIOD AND
MENTION THAT WINTER WEATHER ADVISORIES/WATCHES MAY BE FORTHCOMING
LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT. THIS WILL BE ALSO HEIGHTENED IN HAZARDOUS
WEATHER OUTLOOK.

[BreinLa]

Dang this is crazy!!!

[KatDaddy]

This could be a historic Winter weather event from TX eastward to FLA. This afternoon's AFDs will be very interesting.

[Tireman4]

This could be a historic Winter weather event from TX eastward to FLA. This afternoon's AFDs will be very interesting.

They (HGX) states they will start hoisting watches and advisories tomorrow...I wonder if they will jump the gun and do it tonight.....and like Porta stated, this should start while we are at work and school on Tuesday. Fun, fun. Houston, Austin and San Antonio are SOOO much fun when ice and traffic are mixed. Sigh.

[CYCLONE MIKE]

This could be a historic Winter weather event from TX eastward to FLA. This afternoon's AFDs will be very interesting.

Very well could be. Would not want it to be historic due to an ice storm though. .50in or more of freezing rain would be horrible around here. Much rather make history due to snow