Texas Spring 2017

[Ntxw]

The stronger trade winds have cooled Nino 3.4 down to -0.2C from warm neutral recently. Any El Nino, should it occur, may have to wait longer. Possibly summer or later.

[TeamPlayersBlue]

Such an exciting time with all of the models and watching the storm develop. This is my favorite part of the storms. Not the actual storms themselves. Can learn so much.

[Ralph's Weather]

The past couple days have been nice with highs in the 50s and even had some thunder earlier today.

[bubba hotep]

The stronger trade winds have cooled Nino 3.4 down to -0.2C from warm neutral recently. Any El Nino, should it occur, may have to wait longer. Possibly summer or later.

The CFS has been pushing changes into April. I've never bought into the models showing strong or even mod nino and think this coming event will be on the weaker side. Wouldn't be surprised to the models start cutting back on nino strength. Regardless, the Euro Weeklies still insist on a pattern change by the end of the month with N. Texas and Oklahoma flipping to above normal precipitation. Maybe some wild svr wx gets cranking?

[Ntxw]

The stronger trade winds have cooled Nino 3.4 down to -0.2C from warm neutral recently. Any El Nino, should it occur, may have to wait longer. Possibly summer or later.

The CFS has been pushing changes into April. I've never bought into the models showing strong or even mod nino and think this coming event will be on the weaker side. Wouldn't be surprised to the models start cutting back on nino strength. Regardless, the Euro Weeklies still insist on a pattern change by the end of the month with N. Texas and Oklahoma flipping to above normal precipitation. Maybe some wild svr wx gets cranking?

It will likely get more active as the NPAC pattern shifts, But it's still transient and more seasonal variably vs settling into a true Nino state. It is a very slow progression. I think bursts of rainy periods but overall relative to normal the next month or two will still be overall less than normal due to the increased trades for the rest of March and possibly early April. Closer to the coast should fair better but until there is a trop Pacific connection, I'd be more skeptical of widespread heavy rains for the state.

[Yukon Cornelius]

30-31 this morning, depending where you're at on the property, with a light frost. Most likely the last frost and freeze of the season.

[TeamPlayersBlue]

So when did the PDO have its latest shift? Was it when our winters started sucking? lol. 08-14 seems to be our sweet spot. We need to study this time period like a hawk. Warm pool helped alot for the end of that time period, but we need to study what was going on during those years. One of those winters was severely miserable though, but we saw it coming.

[Texas Snowman]

30 degrees this morning in Denison at North Texas Regional Airport.

Feels good and crisp this morning! I think I'll take a bike ride!

[bubba hotep]

06z GFS has over 4" of rain at DFW during the last week of March. Pretty strong signal on the GEFS as well.

 https://twitter.com/whatisthisrds/status/841638145716305920

[Ntxw]

So when did the PDO have its latest shift? Was it when our winters started sucking? lol. 08-14 seems to be our sweet spot. We need to study this time period like a hawk. Warm pool helped alot for the end of that time period, but we need to study what was going on during those years. One of those winters was severely miserable though, but we saw it coming.

PDO flipped positive in 2014 and has been positive since then. I wouldn't quite blame the PDO though it ended our long term drought and has been wet since. The real culprit the past two years has been the super El Nino inducing the cold pool and having it linger in the NPAC and heating up the globe. Things got really warm since it's induction in early to mid 2015. Not unusual though after the 1997 super event 1998 and 1999 were hot and boring also.

Crisp 39F here this morning, love it. March 23-25 seems to be the next point of interest for a storm on guidance.

[Brent]

pretty big bust in NYC this morning... only 4 inches in Central Park. They went from a blizzard warning to a winter weather advisory! March and warm air wins again. Perfect end to this "winter"

[bubba hotep]

pretty big bust in NYC this morning... only 4 inches in Central Park. They went from a blizzard warning to a winter weather advisory! March and warm air wins again. Perfect end to this "winter"

Yea, it looks like a bust along I95 from DC to NYC but it was a really tough forecast. Very dynamic system with strong WAA and very warm coastal waters. It looks like the ULL got hung up a tad too far west letting the surface low track slightly too far west. Areas just west are getting absolutely crushed! Had things bumped east by 25 miles the NYC is probably cashing in. The models actually started picking this up, esp. if you ignored the snow maps and looked at soundings. My hot take would be that the NWS offices up there were too slow on cutting back totals but it was really a tough call that came down to 20 or 30 miles.

[aggiecutter]

pretty big bust in NYC this morning... only 4 inches in Central Park. They went from a blizzard warning to a winter weather advisory! March and warm air wins again. Perfect end to this "winter"

That happened in Texas. I think it was the winter of 2011. Basically, the whole towns of Houston and Austin were shutdown(airports, major highways etc) about 12 hours before the storm hit. According to the NWS, there was no doubt that the southeastern half of Texas was about to get blasted with a major winter storm. However, there were two amateur forecasters on this very board(myself and NTX) that begged to differ with the NWS forecast. Both of us said repeatedly to follow the track of the upper level energy that was being depicted by the models 24-36 hours before the storm was predicted to hit.

As predicted by the models, the upper level energy tracked through North Central into NE Texas. Texarkana and Dallas, who didn't have any kind of watches or advisories issued, received over 6" of snow. The Houston-Austin area got 5 drops of freezing drizzle combined. I think once the local officials made the decision to shutdown the towns of Austin and Houston, it was too late, although 4 consecutive model runs indicated the worst of the storm would head into North and NE Texas.

[TheProfessor]

I tried to tell my friend who lives on Long Island that when you get a strong storm there's going to be strong WAA and the storm was just too far west for that area to avoid it.

[Brent]

Pretty much every snowstorm I went through in Alabama always would shift NW at the last minute and we saw the same thing here. I always said the best ones were the ones modeled south of us originally(that's also how the 2014 disaster in Atlanta happened)

[Portastorm]

Looking ahead, the GFS still bullish on a severe weather outbreak around March 23-25 for Texas and the Southern Plains. Euro not so much. Guess that'll be the next "thing" to talk about.

[wxman57]

Getting tired of this cold weather. March has been colder than most of January and all of February, so far. Ready for some 70s and 80s! Too cold to ride now. 6Z GFS has above-normal temps for Texas for most of the next 2 weeks. Finally! The only cold front it sees is on the 28th, and it's a weak one.

Let's bring on the heat before the very cold and snowy Texas winter of 2017-2018...

[Brent]

before the very cold and snowy Texas winter of 2017-2018...

One can only hope...

[Portastorm]

While not directly related to our Texas Spring 2017 thread, some of you did opine about the NE storm. So I felt that you'd be interested in this fascinating article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/03/15/weather-service-made-poor-decision-in-overplaying-noreaster-snow-predictions/?utm_term=.222c8885deae

[Ntxw]

Past couple of cool days was great and felt great! Looking forward to some thunderstorms in a week or so, but until then should get considerably warmer and more humid. It does appear the last significant threat of freeze has passed (it still can in April but no impending look on the guidance for one at the moment) so should be safe for gardeners to bring out those seedlings.

The cool spell has brought DFW's anomaly down a bit to +4.7F. The warmer March so far is actually cooler than February . Just to show how historic February was.