Updated 845am CDT Thursday / 21 March 2013
Low Pressure Deepening to our Northwest ….
Upper Air Disturbance and Associated Cold Front Friday Night into Early Saturday ….
Much Cooler.. Below Average.. Temperatures Due by the Sunday into Next Week ….
On this Thursday… a deepening area of low pressure is over eastern Colorado.. western Kansas and southwestward across the Oklahoma panhandle and west Texas and eastern New Mexico. Surface high pressure is east of our area over the Mississippi Valley. Given this surface pressure pattern, surface winds are southerly across our area of Texas.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere, an upper air trough.. or line.. is located over the northeastern USA with another upper air disturbance digging into the northwestern USA. As a result of this upper air wind flow, our upper level winds are strong west northwesterly with winds over Austin at about 18,500 feet blowing about 70 to 80 mph.
In the wake of the storm system that moved across Texas early yesterday.. a partly cloudy sky is prevailing with warmer temperatures.
As surface winds pick up from the south and southeast and surface moisture increases, we’re going to see the clouds increasing as well. As the atmosphere becomes more moist and unstable, we’ll see a slight chance of rain by as early as late tomorrow afternoon and then continuing through tomorrow night and early Saturday ahead of a stronger cold front due in the area by the morning hours on Saturday. As the front moves through the area, widely scattered to scattered rain showers and thunderstorms are possible mainly in the period between midnight Friday night and mid morning on Saturday when the front passes through the area.
Much cooler and drier air will move into the area in the wake of the front midday Saturday through the weekend and into early and mid parts of next week with overnight lows falling into the 30s in the outlying and low lying areas and 40s elsewhere over the weekend. Daytime high will be well below average with highs in the 60s to near 70 with a mostly clear to partly cloudy sky prevailing.
Have a good Thursday night and Friday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel