Updated 845am CDT Wednesday / 24 July 2013
…. Little Change in the Summer Weather Pattern For Now ….
…. A Stable Air Mass with Sun and Clouds with Even Warmer Temperatures ….
…. Some Uncertainty On My Part Concerning a Front Making Its Way into Texas ….
On this Wednesday morning…. an area of high pressure continues over the Gulf of Mexico. A cold front has made it as far south as southern Missouri into a surface low over northwestern Oklahoma and into the Texas panhandle and northeastern New Mexico. A trough.. or line.. of low pressure extends southwestward from the low over northwestern Oklahoma into west Texas and eastern New Mexico. As a result, surface winds are southerly across our local area.
In the upper levels of the atmosphere… a deepening upper air low pressure trough is over the eastern third of the USA with the upper level high pressure area shifting a little further west over west Texas.. New Mexico and Colorado and the southwestern USA. As a result of this upper air pattern, winds over south central Texas and the Austin metro area about 18,000 feet above the ground are becoming a little more west northwesterly at 10 to 20 mph.
A stable atmosphere prevails over the area as upper level high pressure continues overhead and to the west of the area. This pattern will continue over the next few days although the upper high has shifted further west that I thought it would as a result of the deepening upper air low pressure over the eastern third of the country.
This developing upper air pattern has caused me to become a little more uncertain regarding the southward movement of the surface cold front to our north. Atmospheric computer models have been suggesting that the increasingly west and northwesterly wind aloft would allow the cold front to move much more south that it otherwise would in an otherwise summer weather pattern around here. Models have been suggesting some rain chances for the weekend as the weakening front moves southward through Texas. At this point, I’m holding on to a dry forecast but I may have to back track as more forecast data arrives here in the weather office. At this point, I’ll just continue with well above average afternoon high temperatures with a mix of clouds and sunshine over much of the seven day forecast period ahead.
A tropical cyclone.. currently tropical storm Dorian.. is about 325 miles west southwest of the Cape Verde Islands in the far eastern Atlantic Ocean. Otherwise, there are no other tropical threats at this time according to the forecasters at the NWS/National Hurricane Center.
Have a good Tuesday…
Meteorologist Troy Kimmel
Contact me:
tkimmel@austin.utexas.edu
http://www.facebook.com/troykimmel