Texas Winter 2024-2025

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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3421 Postby Ralph's Weather » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:12 am

NWS still bullish for us in E TX. 90% Mix 35F high Thu. 100% Mix to Snow 30F low Thu night.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3422 Postby Lagreeneyes03 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:12 am

Cerlin wrote:Hopping in here for a rare post, but while the NAM runs are concerning I wouldn't put all of my stock into it. We've had several events where the NAM deviated significantly from what happened in reality as it started to show the event in range. The model is really best at about 36 hours because for some reason, its solutions tend to diverge more chaotically as it gets farther away in simulation time from its initialization time. In modeling, something like a difference in a microphysics parameterization scheme can cause wildly different results when the overall physics are largely showing the same solution, and for the NAM's case, it is showing the track and speed of the low relatively consistent with the global models and even some of the other mesoscale models like the RGEM. Remember, when dealing with these events it's all about trends. As long as ensembles and other short range models show precipitation, there's reason to build trust that an event is possible, even if the incoming shortwave near Baja california is starting to indicate there will be overall a warmer airmass creeping into the plains which will decrease snow likelihood south of the red river. But, that being said, if the 12z NAM solution appears on the HRRR by tomorrow morning and starts to creep into ensembles more and more as the next 24 hours happens, I'd start to hit the panic button. However, there's no reason to do that yet--and the meteorologists at the local NWS offices around North Texas seem to agree.


Didn't the NAM do this very thing on Feb 2021, HRRR and RGEM nailed the heavy precip and even the second disturbance, NAM got it at +24 mor or less.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3423 Postby Brandon8181 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:13 am

Cerlin wrote:
Cpv17 wrote:
Cerlin wrote:Hopping in here for a rare post, but while the NAM runs are concerning I wouldn't put all of my stock into it. We've had several events where the NAM deviated significantly from what happened in reality as it started to show the event in range. The model is really best at about 36 hours because for some reason, its solutions tend to diverge more chaotically as it gets farther away in simulation time from its initialization time. In modeling, something like a difference in a microphysics parameterization scheme can cause wildly different results when the overall physics are largely showing the same solution, and for the NAM's case, it is showing the track and speed of the low relatively consistent with the global models and even some of the other mesoscale models like the RGEM. Remember, when dealing with these events it's all about trends. As long as ensembles and other short range models show precipitation, there's reason to build trust that an event is possible, even if the incoming shortwave near Baja california is starting to indicate there will be overall a warmer airmass creeping into the plains which will decrease snow likelihood south of the red river. But, that being said, if the 12z NAM solution appears on the HRRR by tomorrow morning and starts to creep into ensembles more and more as the next 24 hours happens, I'd start to hit the panic button. However, there's no reason to do that yet--and the meteorologists at the local NWS offices around North Texas seem to agree.


Wow, you haven’t been on here in a couple years. Welcome back! I was wondering where you were lol

Been a little busy but I've been keeping up and reading along! But, I do have a degree in Meteorology now! :D


That’s good, because the things we say and post are heresay and we are very unreliable lol
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3424 Postby txtwister78 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:14 am

rwfromkansas wrote:Well, this has been a shocking turn of events. I thought since it was 2025 and relative consistency we were set for a fairly good event. I didn't buy 12 inches, and I took out some for melting. But, I was thinking 6-8 was likely, which would be the biggest snow sincewe moved here in 2014. But, likely having school Thursday and Friday now. A few inches of snow won't cancel school even here.

Hugging that Euro. Lol

We will see, glad to see other high-res models don't agree with the NAM.

One question I have is isn't the high pressing from CO? So wouldn't that bring some fresh cold? I would think that would counter the WAA to a degree.


I've said this before on this forum and it really shows up in these type of events and that is forecasting weather down in this region is hard enough, but forecasting winter weather is even more of a challenge. Why? Because you have so many players on the field that have to align just right not to mention influences like oh say the Pacific, the Gulf, arctic air (which models never handle well) and trying to determine systems that sometimes come out over Mexico.

Areas further north you can "see" a lot of weather and have a pretty good idea several days out what is likely to occur. That's not always the case down here and so models several days out (especially in this particular event where its upper level driven) are really just guessing at what may happen and so just something to keep in mind should we have more opportunities for winter weather down here. I think the days of calling the Euro "king" ended after 2021 and that was my opinion then and it remains that way today for good reason.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3425 Postby Ralph's Weather » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:18 am

RAP and NAM both hanging SW low out over Baja. Other models kick it out.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3426 Postby orangeblood » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:19 am

Stratton23 wrote:12z GFS really backing off on snow for DFW, 1-2 inches, big totals continue to shift further NE, more rain mixing in on this run, not looking great


Even with the warmer end GFS, the sounding actually looks good with a really razor thin warm nose. If the QPF is there, the Euro should win out in the end with it's bullish evaporative cooling. You just need heavier QPF to make it happen

Image

As you can see, the Euro doesn't have that tiny warm nose like the GFS
Image
Last edited by orangeblood on Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3427 Postby bubba hotep » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:20 am

12z Canadian is pretty similar to the RGEM. Also, the 12z GFS is closer to the Euro/Canadian camp than it is to the NAM. I would say the 12z NAM is a big outlier and that subtle timing differences b/w the Euro, Canadian, and GFS have significant impacts on the outcome of the winter storm. I think there is plenty of time for this to trend either way, esp. if you toss the 12z NAM.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3428 Postby cheezyWXguy » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:32 am

txtwister78 wrote:
rwfromkansas wrote:Well, this has been a shocking turn of events. I thought since it was 2025 and relative consistency we were set for a fairly good event. I didn't buy 12 inches, and I took out some for melting. But, I was thinking 6-8 was likely, which would be the biggest snow sincewe moved here in 2014. But, likely having school Thursday and Friday now. A few inches of snow won't cancel school even here.

Hugging that Euro. Lol

We will see, glad to see other high-res models don't agree with the NAM.

One question I have is isn't the high pressing from CO? So wouldn't that bring some fresh cold? I would think that would counter the WAA to a degree.


I've said this before on this forum and it really shows up in these type of events and that is forecasting weather down in this region is hard enough, but forecasting winter weather is even more of a challenge. Why? Because you have so many players on the field that have to align just right not to mention influences like oh say the Pacific, the Gulf, arctic air (which models never handle well) and trying to determine systems that sometimes come out over Mexico.

Areas further north you can "see" a lot of weather and have a pretty good idea several days out what is likely to occur. That's not always the case down here and so models several days out (especially in this particular event where its upper level driven) are really just guessing at what may happen and so just something to keep in mind should we have more opportunities for winter weather down here. I think the days of calling the Euro "king" ended after 2021 and that was my opinion then and it remains that way today for good reason.

I think what has tripped me up the most about this storm is my assumption that the 500mb pattern would be largely locked in 2-3 days out so we could work out the finer details like WAA and precip onset time that would make or break the more extreme broadbrushed 10+” solutions. It looks like that assumption has burned me, but I still don’t think it was terribly unreasonable to assume that we were in a close enough timeframe that a shift as large as this one would not occur. The 12”+ solutions were fun to look at, but it was the ensemble means of 5-8” that really got my hopes up.

That said, there is still some time to get back to a middle of the road solution, though it’s pretty limited. Guess we will see.
Last edited by cheezyWXguy on Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3429 Postby orangeblood » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:33 am

bubba hotep wrote:12z Canadian is pretty similar to the RGEM. Also, the 12z GFS is closer to the Euro/Canadian camp than it is to the NAM. I would say the 12z NAM is a big outlier and that subtle timing differences b/w the Euro, Canadian, and GFS have significant impacts on the outcome of the winter storm. I think there is plenty of time for this to trend either way, esp. if you toss the 12z NAM.


Yep, the sounding really creates a much better picture of how much of a close call this is. If the qpf is there, you're talking the difference b/w 2-3 and 8-10 inches of snow.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3430 Postby Ntxw » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:36 am

cheezyWXguy wrote:I think what has tripped me up the most about this storm is my assumption that the 500mb pattern would be largely locked in 2-3 days out so we could work out the finer details like WAA and precip onset time that would make or break the more extreme broadbrushed 10+” solutions. It looks like that assumption has burned me, but I still don’t think it was terribly unreasonable to assume that we were in a close enough timeframe that a shift as large as this one would occur. The 12”+ solutions were fun to look at, but it was the ensemble means of 5-8” that really got my hopes up.

That said, there is still some time to get back to a middle of the road solution, though it’s pretty limited. Guess we will see.


When the pattern slows, as is with big -AO, and a low spends a time cutting off from the main flow there is always risk. That was another road block period (now) once the low digs and sits for a bit. What position is it when the polar jet picks it up? Is it slightly NW, SE, NE, in pieces, all of it, etc? It's one of the toughest to forecast.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3431 Postby txtwister78 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:40 am

bubba hotep wrote:12z Canadian is pretty similar to the RGEM. Also, the 12z GFS is closer to the Euro/Canadian camp than it is to the NAM. I would say the 12z NAM is a big outlier and that subtle timing differences b/w the Euro, Canadian, and GFS have significant impacts on the outcome of the winter storm. I think there is plenty of time for this to trend either way, esp. if you toss the 12z NAM.


ICON looks very NAMish to me, so it does have a little support. I think the interesting thing about the globals is by in large they were super "early" on this by jumping the gun on monster snowfall totals (GFS not as bad) and so typically they end up being "last" to the party as we're seeing just in terms of realistic snowfall projections and the pattern evolving the closer we get. That's not to say we shouldn't look at them or as some of us have mentioned previously go with blends (think that's a good idea) but as someone mentioned to me yesterday on here about "throwing out the GFS" and going all in with short range high-res models, those will probably shed more light before these globals play catch up. I mean we're clearly seeing that on snowfall projections alone the closer we get.
Last edited by txtwister78 on Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3432 Postby rwfromkansas » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:40 am

txtwister78 wrote:
rwfromkansas wrote:Well, this has been a shocking turn of events. I thought since it was 2025 and relative consistency we were set for a fairly good event. I didn't buy 12 inches, and I took out some for melting. But, I was thinking 6-8 was likely, which would be the biggest snow sincewe moved here in 2014. But, likely having school Thursday and Friday now. A few inches of snow won't cancel school even here.

Hugging that Euro. Lol

We will see, glad to see other high-res models don't agree with the NAM.

One question I have is isn't the high pressing from CO? So wouldn't that bring some fresh cold? I would think that would counter the WAA to a degree.


I've said this before on this forum and it really shows up in these type of events and that is forecasting weather down in this region is hard enough, but forecasting winter weather is even more of a challenge. Why? Because you have so many players on the field that have to align just right not to mention influences like oh say the Pacific, the Gulf, arctic air (which models never handle well) and trying to determine systems that sometimes come out over Mexico.

Areas further north you can "see" a lot of weather and have a pretty good idea several days out what is likely to occur. That's not always the case down here and so models several days out (especially in this particular event where its upper level driven) are really just guessing at what may happen and so just something to keep in mind should we have more opportunities for winter weather down here. I think the days of calling the Euro "king" ended after 2021 and that was my opinion then and it remains that way today for good reason.


Great post. Even growing up in Kansas I remember may storms where we got a dusting instead of 6 inches or the opposite due to some minor unexpected difference. Even with the model advances, there are just too many complex factors involved to be too sure before it gets close.

Honestly, I would take anything. I really don't see the NAM with zero happening surely because there usually will be enough moisture to squeeze out something. It may be a 1/2 inch, but hey, that's better than nothing.

Hopefully the hope later in the month into February comes to fruition for the whole region.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3433 Postby Fifty Rock » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:53 am

I think this guy says it well from the NWS in San Angelo.

European ensemble data has come more in line with the GFS with an
overall drier solution with the heaviest snow totals offset to the
north and east closer to the DFW metroplex and along the Red River
into southeastern Oklahoma and Arkansas. There's still a great deal
of uncertainty in regards to surface and low level temperatures as
just a few degrees will make a world of difference in p-type. I'm
not convinced that the mid range models are picking up on some of
the evaporative cooling that will take place once precipitation
starts late Wednesday which may make the transition to a more
singular winter precip type happen more quickly but until we start
getting some more hi-res guidance, this will be hard to pin down.
All this to say that the dramatic shift in the 00Z model suite has
thrown a massive wrench in our previous forecast. We are hoping that
the 12Z suite provides a bit more consistency to start configuring a
potential winter storm watch for portions of our area. The best
chances for snow remain in the eastern Big Country where the axis
of heavier snow still looks to set up. However, where totals were
in the 3-7 inch range yesterday, we now have totals maxing out in
the 2-4 inch range. Ice totals have also come up for the NW Hill
Country and southern Heartland where a wintry mix may transition
to freezing rain. Everywhere south of the Big Country is a big
question mark at this point in time. Overall totals of anything
should be taken with a boulder-sized grain of salt as details are
likely to change in the next 24-36 hours. To reiterate: the main
takeaway is that chances for mixed-precip has gone up and chances
for widespread snow have gone down.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3434 Postby Stratton23 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:55 am

CMC has a southern winter weather event late next week lol
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3435 Postby MississippiWx » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:55 am

I live in South Ms and even I am depressed for you guys in Texas. What a terrible trend in models. Hoping for a reversal of them for you. Upper level lows/disturbances have always been huge trouble for models to predict. We are on the outside looking up at North MS who looks to get blanketed by snow. Would consider making a trip up there, but afraid of having to navigate the icy boundary between rain and snow.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3436 Postby Ntxw » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:57 am

In other news, our system is causing some havoc in southern california. Lots of wind warnings out there. From the LA NWS.

Image

Los Angeles, CA

Weather Forecast Office

Area Forecast Discussion
Weather.gov > Los Angeles, CA
Show All ProductsBrowse DictionaryTurn Dictionary OnFont: A A APrinter FriendlyAbout This Page
For other versions of this product select from this menu
Jan 7, 2025 10:26 AM
or click here: Older Version Link to this version

000
FXUS66 KLOX 071626
AFDLOX

Area Forecast Discussion
National Weather Service Los Angeles/Oxnard CA
826 AM PST Tue Jan 7 2025

.SYNOPSIS...07/312 AM.

Widespread damaging north to northeast winds and extreme fire
weather conditions will develop today through Wednesday. Winds
will peak this evening through Wednesday morning. Downed trees,
hazardous driving conditions, increased traffic, power outages,
and airport delays are to be expected across Los Angeles and
Ventura Counties. Any wildfires that start may spread rapidly with
extreme fire behavior.

&&

.SHORT TERM (TDY-THU)...07/825 AM.

***UPDATE***

Interesting start to the significant Santa Ana wind event. Wrap
around moisture has generated clouds across LA county with even
some rain/snow across the desert slopes and mountain peaks. Rain
totals have been 0.25 inches or less with a couple inches of snow
above 5500 feet. Otherwise, current observations indicate the
strong Santa Ana winds are developing, gusts up to 79 MPH have
already been reported.

Forecast-wise for the immediate short term, things are still very
much on track. Based on radar trends, the precipitation threat is
moving south and east of the area, and the threat is expected to
end by the afternoon. As for winds, nothing in the current
observations or initial 12Z model data indicates any deviation
from strong and damaging Santa Ana winds for the area. Current
slate of HIGH WIND WARNINGS and WIND ADVISORIES look very
appropriate. For the latest details, check out LAXNPWLOX for the
latest details.

Overall, current forecast has good handle on the immediate short
term. So, other than minor tweaks to cloud forecast, no
significant updates are expected.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3437 Postby MississippiWx » Tue Jan 07, 2025 11:57 am

Stratton23 wrote:CMC has a southern winter weather event late next week lol


Going to use my wxman impersonation: “Yeah sure, I’ll believe it THIS time.” :ggreen:
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3438 Postby txtwister78 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 12:04 pm

Stratton23 wrote:CMC has a southern winter weather event late next week lol


Yup definitely watching that time period next week. Doesn't have much support yet, but GEFS trying to be bring some more cold down early next week.
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3439 Postby txtwister78 » Tue Jan 07, 2025 12:19 pm

Shouldn't be too surprising at this point based on trends, but latest NBM (blend of models) has continued to come down on overall snowfall totals.

Image
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Re: Texas Winter 2024-2025

#3440 Postby South Texas Storms » Tue Jan 07, 2025 12:29 pm

UKMET continues to stick to it's guns in keeping most of the precip south of north TX. It's been very consistent with that solution and has never had more than a few inches of snow across north TX. Would be a big win for that model if it verifies.
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