Texas Winter 2013-2014

[srainhoutx]

Emergency Management in Cooke County reporting overpasses and bridges on I-35 are becoming covered in sleet and are very slick.

[Snowman67]

Just did a meteogram (6z GFS) for Tomball - if temps end up being just a few degrees lower than forecasted in the late Thursday/early Friday time frame, we may be dealing with another round of wintry precip.

[Tammie]

Looking at the radar, most of this seems to be just north of even Denton. Is that going to be the track for the day or will the moisture slide further south? Are we expecting moisture from the gulf to fill in over the DFW area? I don't see a lot of movement going on other than to the NE.

[Snowman67]

Pretty impressive Temp drop - 14F in one hour.

[iorange55]

Temperature at around 32 here at the house, but it's probably closer to 33/34, it usually runs a little on the cool side. Still hoping for a snow miracle for my birthday, although it's looking like cold rain/icy mess.

At least the latest GFS trended wetter with the weekend system with its last run.

[Portastorm]

Folks, we went through a historic occasion in the last 12 hours of special note for you North Texas members! Did you realize that your local NWS office (@NWSFortWorth) used Twitter to provide nonstop forecast reasoning, insights, and real-time observations on the weather? That's right ... the midnight shift specifically were the ones who used Twitter to open the window into their world.

To my knowledge no other Texas-based WFO has done such a thing. It was as if they brought you into their office, gave you a workstation alongside them, and openly discussed what they looked at and how they came to deciding on a forecast. Absolutely groundbreaking social media type stuff and certainly extraordinary for NWS!

I'm going to repeat this post throughout the day because I want folks in the NWS Dallas/Fort Worth area to know what an amazing bunch of government professionals they have working for them, besides Dennis Cavanaugh.

Go back and look at their tweets for yourself and see what I'm talking about. As I myself wrote on Twitter, those men and women on that midnight deserve a high five, or fist bump, or whatever accolade you think is appropriate.

[TheProfessor]

very light freezing drizzle occurring right now, i can report ice on mailboxes and speed bumps.

[Portastorm]

The West Texas office of the PWC is reporting several inches of sleet/snow in the Lubbock area with dangerous road conditions.

[srainhoutx]

Reports of accidents in Jacksboro (Jack County) with up to .50 inches of sleet on the roads. In Graham (Young County), .25 inches of sleet on roads reported. In Sunset (Montague County), .20 inch of freezing rain reported. US 287 starting to ice up between Bowie and Sunset.

[wxman57]

RUC soundings indicate a very shallow near to sub-freezing layer in Dallas-Ft. Worth this morning with temps rising steadily above about 1000 ft to near 50F at 5000 ft. By mid afternoon, the RUC shrinks the warm nose considerably but temps are forecast to remain 34F-36F between about 1000 ft. above the surface and about 10,000 ft. That's warmer aloft than we were in Houston last Tuesday when we had a mixture of freezing rain and sleet and a few tiny snowflakes as the precip ended. Our temperature during the precip was 29-30F.

The atmospheric profiles and the weather systems between this one and Houston's last week are vastly different...so I'm not sure you can compare the two soundings. The dendritic growth zone in some of those convective bands will produce massive amounts of super cooled snowflakes above this warm layer, thus you would probably see a rapid erosion of that warm layer as precip increase in coverage around DFW. Will it be enough to change to snow?

The main difference I see is that the airmass over D-FW is warmer than that over Houston last week. I still think that area will see mostly freezing rain with a little sleet. Possibly a brief small snowflake mid afternoon and later.

[TheProfessor]

Precipitation continues develop in West Texas, with my temperatures already below freezing i feel like this could be a pretty big ice storm or snow storm for me.

[gto67]

Thanks for the site info.

[Portastorm]

Precipitation continues develop in West Texas, with my temperatures already below freezing i feel like this could be a pretty big ice storm or snow storm for me.

The real fun stuff will happen if you end up with any thundersleet or thundersnow. Let us know! It's a pretty cool experience to see lightning, hear thunder, and realize that it is sleet or snow falling and not rain!

[iorange55]

Precipitation continues develop in West Texas, with my temperatures already below freezing i feel like this could be a pretty big ice storm or snow storm for me.

The real fun stuff will happen if you end up with any thundersleet or thundersnow. Let us know! It's a pretty cool experience to see lightning, hear thunder, and realize that it is sleet or snow falling and not rain!

Oh, the memories. The 2010 snowstorm that dropped over 12 inches of snow had some thunder with it. That day/night was so magical, seeing the snow just continue to fall down and accumulate.

[TheProfessor]

Precipitation continues develop in West Texas, with my temperatures already below freezing i feel like this could be a pretty big ice storm or snow storm for me.

The real fun stuff will happen if you end up with any thundersleet or thundersnow. Let us know! It's a pretty cool experience to see lightning, hear thunder, and realize that it is sleet or snow falling and not rain!

If I here thunder i'll be sure to record it, can you post recordings on here?

[Portastorm]

Wow ... just caught this ...

AREA FORECAST DISCUSSION
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX
900 AM CST SUN FEB 2 2014

.UPDATE...
DID A QUICK UPDATE TO SET THE MORNING TRENDS A LITTLE BETTER ON
TEMPS AND DEWPOINTS OVER THE HILL COUNTRY WHERE TEMPS ARE IN THE
LOW TO MID 30S. WITH RADAR PICKING UP SOME LIGHT ECHOES OVER THESE
AREAS THAT ARE HOVERING IN THE LOWER TO MIDDLE 30S WILL SEND OUT A
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT FOR THESE AREAS TO INCLUDE MENTION OF
BRIEF LIGHT FREEZING RAIN. WITH RETURNS SO LIGHT...AND TEMPS
LIKELY ALREADY BOTTOMING OUT...THERE SHOULD BE MINIMAL IMPACT.
WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR HOWEVER IN CASE A WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY
IS NEEDED FOR THE WESTERN HILL COUNTRY AREAS. WATER VAPOR SHOWS
DRYING STARTING TO MAKE ITS WAY INTO WESTERN VAL VERDE COUNTY.

[srainhoutx]

Emergency Management in Grayson County reporting numerous accidents throughout the County on various transportation roadways due to icing.

[Ntxw]

Side stepping a little, people in the southern plains needs to watch this middle system (southern plains as a whole, remember Nebraska? Don't think so). As I've said numerous times before the models cannot handle ejections from the SW of strong shortwaves properly. I'm not even sure it has that 5h low right (continues to change) nonetheless the late week system. Just my 2 cents this morning.

There will also be a significant snow cover immediately to our north and west, thanks to this seemingly not so little system anymore, that the models frankly did not see a little less than 3 days ago.

[TheProfessor]

Has anyone looked at Abilene's radar on NOAA, it shows a storm dropping somewhere between .5-1 inch of rain per hour. It is moving east-southeast and looks to have its eyes on southern Denton county and central and northern Tarrant county.

[Portastorm]

SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX
918 AM CST SUN FEB 2 2014

TXZ171-172-183>186-188-021800-
LLANO-BURNET-VAL VERDE-EDWARDS-REAL-KERR-GILLESPIE-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...LLANO...BURNET...DEL RIO...
ROCKSPRINGS...LEAKEY...KERRVILLE...FREDERICKSBURG
918 AM CST SUN FEB 2 2014

...COLD LIGHT RAIN...MAY BE MIXED WITH SOME FREEZING RAIN...

A STRONG COLD FRONT HAS PUSHED THROUGH THE HILL COUNTRY DROPPING
TEMPERATURES TO NEAR FREEZING IN SOME LOCATIONS FROM NORTHERN VAL
VERDE COUNTY...THROUGH GILLESPIE COUNTY...AND UP TO BURNET COUNTY.
RADAR IS SHOWING SOME LIGHT PRECIPITATION FALLING IN THIS REGION
AND A FEW WEATHER STATIONS ARE SHOWING MORNING TEMPERATURES IN
THE LOWER 30S. WHILE WE ARE NOT EXPECTING ANY ROAD AND TRAVEL
IMPACTS AT THIS TIME...THERE COULD BE A FEW LOCATIONS IN THE FAR
WESTERN HILL COUNTRY THAT RECEIVES SOME LIGHT FREEZING RAIN OR
DRIZZLE FOR AN HOUR OR TWO. SOME LIGHT GLAZING COULD OCCUR ON
WINDSHIELDS AND EXPOSED SURFACES BUT ROADS AND BRIDGES SHOULD
REMAIN CLEAR OF ICE AT THIS TIME.

WE WILL CONTINUE TO MONITOR THE SITUATION THROUGHOUT THE MORNING
FOR POSSIBLE UPDATES. A CHANCE OF LIGHT PRECIPITATION WILL REMAIN
THROUGH THE MORNING...WITH CHANCES DECREASING DURING THE
AFTERNOON.

GO TO WEATHER.GOV/AUSTIN FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION...FORECASTS
AND WARNINGS.

$$