Today was much cooler than this weekend and tomorrow, on average, will be about 2 degrees cooler than today. Temperatures will warm up on Wednesday by about 2-4 degrees. After that, the bottom really drops out by Thursday for Kansas and a large portion of Oklahoma; followed by Texas on Friday. A strong cold front will dive into the area on Thursday sending temperatures plummeting late Thursday night into Friday morning. (The models arent agreeing on the timing of this front, but I believe a Thursday into Friday time-frame is the most accurate.) At the same time, precipitation chances will increase along and behind the cold front. Beginning Friday afternoon a very cold rain looks likely for the area with a low threat for freeing rain for northern and western parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and extreme northwest Texas. Right now Im calling for a chilly rain in Texoma but we need to keep a close eye on this. (The ECMWF and Canadian model are calling for a light wintry mixture for northern Texoma, but the GFS is warmer and keeps liquid precipitation across Texoma.) We should see a brief lull in the activity Saturday afternoon except for western Texas, northern Oklahoma, and southern Kansas where light drizzle, freezing drizzle/sleet MAY continue throughout the day. Heading into Sunday-Monday a cutoff low will begin to move eastward towards the Southern Plains. (The 12Z ECMWF model is now showing the low moving towards our area by Sunday instead of retrograding the low pressure system off of the West Coast. This would give the strong low more cold air to work with and potentially create a wintry mess for parts of the Southern Plains. The GFS, however, is doing the opposite and retrograding the low before it kicks off to the east early next week, dumping a cold rain!) There are several scenarios that may play out with this system. At this point the temperatures are going to be borderline and 1 or 2 degrees may make the difference between a cold rain and a wintry mess. The best chance for any wintry precipitation is across Kansas, northern Oklahoma, and western Texas at this point. It looks like a freezing rain/sleet event due to the shallow cold airmass. Temperatures a few hundred feet above the ground will be several degrees above freezing. As the closed low moves overhead there MAY be a brief chance for the precipitation to transition into wet snow once dynamic cooling takes place. To say the least, there are a lot of forecast challenges over the next few days. Please note that we are several days out and A LOT will change in this forecast and its not concrete at this point! (Right now the best forecast would be a cold rain, but we cant neglect that the ECMWF and Canadian are continuing to show wintry precipitation.) We will provide you with as many accurate updates as possible as we get closer to this event and please SHARE this to give a heads up. -Christopher
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 01:51:27 +0000
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