aggiegeog

As expected the weather looks to turn very cold and possibly stormy as we enter February. A big Pacific ridge extending into Siberia along with a mean trough over the West which slowly slides east.

Two tonado warnings east of DFW right now. One over Lake Tawakoni and one just east of Corsicana.

2 hours ago, wxmx said:

Next shot for NM is around the 21st. Then, the 28th+ looks like an opportunity for most of the region if heights in the Pacific coast can build and tap the Canadian cold air. Plus, it looks like the NE will build a semi-blocking ridge, which would give us a deepening, slow moving trough and a 1-2 punch of cold air, plus the resulting positive tilt to the trough can tap moisture from the Pacific.

The 12Z NAM 3km maxed out at 28" of snow on Sunday for the mountain above my family's place in southern Taos County NM. They have not had even half that this season as a whole.

6 was my low, some around here got to 4. 

9 here at 3am. Spots around are as low as 7. Doubt anyone goes below 0 but even still looks like the coldest night around here in 29 years.

On track for some mid single digits around here and maybe below 0 along the Red River.

Now to see if the I20 corridor can go below 10 tonight and the I30 corridor below 0. The last time either of those happened in E TX was 1989.

My street is now clear, but seeing reports that mossy roads around here are ice covered. I sure the difference here is I did not get any freezing rain and barely any sleet. Also very little traffic to compact the snow so the sub filtering through the clouds wad enough to warm the blacktop here.

Roads are snow covered in Hideaway and about an inch so far of powdery snow. We are about a third of the way through this event here. Temp down to 23 and steadily falling. Never seen show like this except in the mountains.

26 and pretty much all snow in Hideaway. Dusting now and accumulating good now.

Moderate sleet in Hideaway. Temp is 30 with mid 20s moving in. All going according to expectations. Still expecting 2+" of snow here. 700mb front did its job to light up the radar.

We will see how theradar looks overt the next couple hours and the amount of snow showing up near the Red River will tell the take off what we can expect overnight.

13 minutes ago, vwgrrc said:

I have a feeling that NWS is bit conservative by saying that HRRR is too wet (or maybe they ignore the trend?). But if the this solution pans out, it gonna be a major ice event that includes DFW.

It seems that at least the latter portion of the period that the HRRR has ice could be sleet of even snow per the soundings which show just a slight warm nose. This could bump totals up some even if it is overdoing moisture by a bit. HRRR gives me around 0.5" liquid with subfreezing temps. Gives Dallas Co 0.1-0.2" liquid when subfreezing.

1 hour ago, vwgrrc said:

Agree. You can see this change now on HRRR. More snow linger around NTX after the front pushed into Central TX. What concerns me is the HRRRX solution has a lot more ice before the transition to snow! But I'm not familiar with that model. No idea why it's so different from HRRR.

I sure am hoping that the cold deepens quickly cutting down on the ice and sleet and upping the snow. Deep E TX and northern Central Texas could get a good amount of sleet though. Up along I 20 in E TX we could see 3-5" totals if the cold deepens fast enough maybe more in spots. The trends are sure looking good right now.

A big thing in our favor up along I20 is that the models last night initialized the surface high too strong which caused things to dry out too quickly up this way. The hi res models are more accurate with their initialization and they show percip starting along the Read River vs along I20. This leads to a longer duration precip event. Up here most precip will be frozen but we will have to see when the transition happens from sleet to snow.

Still looks like it will be a rare event where E TX is the bullseye.

Travel is looking rough for much of the state for the majority of this week. Starting tomorrow evening north of I-20 and down to I-10 by late Tuesday. Along the I-20 corridor expect mainly snow with general amounts of 1-3". For Central and Deep E TX into northern SE TX this is more of a sleet event with some freezing rain, in this area we are looking at around .5" of sleet and freezing rain accumulations. Along I-10 looking at a mix, likely primarily a elevated surface issue with maybe some sleet accumulating on grass.

This event is a 1 to localize 3 inch snow event along I20. All we need is a general .1" of liquid or even less with temps in the teens and no significant warm nose this far north. And i am betting the late week system comes in much colder aloft and at the surface those details with begin to be seen by Monday at the earliest.

26 minutes ago, vwgrrc said:

You're right. Both 6z and 12z indicate more moisture that yesterday and NWS suggests in the AM discussion the cold air may move in quicker. It looks like we're finally onto some real winter weather this time.

One thing I don't understand is why NAM is still showing virtually nothing for NTX when other models are so consistent with good agreement. I thought NAM is a good model for wintry events like this. But I'm not met... could be wrong.

Different models have their strong suits. This event is a larger scale event so the globals seem to have it under control. I am hoping the NAM will begin helping to nail down the sweet spots latwr today and esp tomorrow. Also very interested in what the RGEM shows starting tomorrow it seems to do well with larger scale events at short range.

19 minutes ago, vwgrrc said:

12z CMC, GFS, and ECMWF all hold up well for N TX next Monday night into Tuesday. Not a huge amount of precip after the cold front. But I think it's not very uncommon for models to under estimate the progression of the cold air in this kind of setup, in which case we may end up with more/earlier frozen precip than expected. Correct me if I'm wrong.

DFW likely gets the front close to midday with rain going to snow during the early afternoon and lasting through the evening though amounts look to be light. I am thinking a dusting to localized couple inches with the most on the east side of DFW.

For the Tyler area I expect the front early afternoon with rain changing to sleet/freezing rain by late afternoon and to snow by evening lasting into Tuesday morning maybe. Areas between I-20 and I -30 in E TX could see 1-3". In Deep E TX I think the front comes through during the evening Monday with rain going to freezing rain and sleet by late evening and changing to snow by Tuesday morning, down here snow will likely be less than an inch but icing could be an issue. For northern SE TX and the Brazos Valley I would give a similar forecast. I do think there is potential that models are currently underestimating moisture return so amounts are more likely to increase than decrease over eastern TX.

I am not a good source for Central Texas, but you could likely extrapolate my above forecasts to include areas of Central Texas.

In short, yes I do think that the front will arrive earlier and a tad colder than forecast. Also moisture could end up deeper than modeled.

And this could be a nice fluffy snow so a .25" liquid could mean 4-6" of snow across the northern half of the state.

Next week looks very cold with multiple systems to watch.

7 hours ago, raindancewx said:

It's kind of amusing see TX as one of the big winners for precipitation this winter - we're not even remotely close to Nina climatology at this point (40/90 days in). I know here, I should have ~0.63" for Dec 1-Jan 11 using 1951-2010, probably more using 1981-2010, so I'd say -0.5mm/day is about right here. The wet NW idea has absolutely not verified this winter, outside Montana. 

It sure has been an odd winter. It seems like the endless +PNA is finally breaking down so a more typical pattern should emerge at some point.

Precip is firing again to my west as expected and temp is 37 and falling. This could be something here, not much but something. That WRF-ARW2 model has done great all day.

17 minutes ago, vwgrrc said:

He's mainly pointing to the 17-19 period where the warm up you see should come later after that. But honestly I don't think the models can handle that at all at this range. As we speak, 18z looks vastly different. It seems like every run is an outlier!

We are in ensemble range. The op runs will vary wildly run to run for the next 4 or so days as the Pacific mess gets sorted out.