Updated 845am CT Tuesday / 4 February 2014
…. Clouds Break Today with A Brief Warming Trend ….
…. A Strong Cold Front Arrives Later Tonight into Early Wednesday ….
…. Overrunning Clouds and Precipitation Event Thursday into Friday ….
On this Tuesday morning…. a surface high pressure area is over the northeastern USA. A warm front along the Texas coast. A southward moving cold front is over Iowa and Nebraska and Colorado. As a result of this surface weather pattern, our surface winds are light north northeasterly across our area.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere… the counterclockwise rotating upper level low pressure continues just northeast of Hudson Bay with another upper air trough.. or line of low pressure.. rotating in the overall counterclockwise flow and moving eastward across the state of Texas. As a result of this upper air wind pattern, the upper level winds over south central Texas and the Austin metro area about 18,000 feet above the ground are southwesterly at 90 to 105 mph.
Today, with the passage of the upper level low pressure disturbance, we’ll see even warmer temperatures with the rain chances now decreasing. Midday into the afternoon today, a drier westerly surface wind flow will develop with the return to sunshine and much warmer temperatures.
This will be followed by a strong cold frontal passage by late tonight into early Wednesday with increasing and gusty northerly winds and much colder temperatures following.
Tomorrow will see a sunny but unseasonably chill day. By tomorrow evening through the night and into Thursday and Friday, another overrunning pattern will develop as another upper air low pressure disturbance moves across the area. With temperatures forecast to be near or just below freezing Thursday night into Friday morning, guidance suggests the possibility of some freezing/frozen precipitation across some of our local area. That same guidance suggests relatively slim precipitation probabilities so I still consider this a “low” probability event. I’ll continue to monitor this possibility closely.
The overrunning pattern will persist into the weekend as temperatures slowly warm before the next cold front arrives late Saturday into early Sunday. Early indications are that skies will clear with colder temperatures by Saturday night into Sunday.
Regarding my forecast, my local forecast confidence: My confidence in my forecast is high today through Wednesday. My forecast confidence falls to low to moderate for Thursday into Friday (particularly low confidence regarding frozen/freezing precipitation chances) and then returns to high confidence for Friday afternoon through the upcoming weekend.
Have a good Tuesday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel