Texas Winter 2024-2025

[orangeblood]

GFS has highs in the plains Wednesday afternoon folks in the 30's. Where's the true arctic air? It's hung up in Ontario but that's not going to get it done here. Not enough cold this go around. Highs in the 40's in the panhandle and into Oklahoma Thursday as the system ejects out with mid to low 30's across the Hill Country. Borderline is an understatement.

It's there and headed south. Temps are 35-45 F below normal in our source region with 1048 Arctic HP in southern Canada with another one right on its heels in the Yukon. How many times have we seen Models overestimate modifying temps too quickly ? It happens almost every single arctic outbreak without fail. It's the coldest time of year climatologically with a fresh snowpack underneath the Arctic HP - I believe it's more logical to lean towards the colder side of guidance and not verbatim model output

[wxman57]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Ha! And then there's the Canadian with a forecast of 11F here next Saturday.

[Nederlander]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Unfortunately I am becoming a bit more pessimistic here north of Houston and thinking we may get some very cold rain, which would be the worst possible solution.

[iorange55]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Agreed. I suppose there is a trend of more moisture, but yeah… no idea what’s going to happen.

Should be fun to watch though!

[Brandon8181]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Although, I know there is truth to what you were saying, part of me thinks you were saying this because you like it HOT lol

If it showed 90’s everyday I think you would say the GFS was always preforming properly lol

[dhweather]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

This is wisdom.

[wxman57]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Although, I know there is truth to what you were saying, part of me thinks you were saying this because you like it HOT lol

If it showed 90’s everyday I think you would say the GFS was always preforming properly lol

There's a lot of truth to what I'm saying. I'm telling our clients the same thing. Wait until maybe 24 hours to 36 hours before any winter weather event. Only then may we have a good idea what might happen. And even then, there will be model divergence.

By the way, the GFS is often right when it predicts 90s between late May and September.

[gpsnowman]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Although, I know there is truth to what you were saying, part of me thinks you were saying this because you like it HOT lol

If it showed 90’s everyday I think you would say the GFS was always preforming properly lol

There's a lot of truth to what I'm saying. I'm telling our clients the same thing. Wait until maybe 24 hours to 36 hours before any winter weather event. Only then may we have a good idea what might happen. And even then, there will be model divergence.

By the way, the GFS is often right when it predicts 90s between late May and September.

The Texas summer. A forecaster's dream.

[Cpv17]

If you haven't been following the MJO is trending towards amplification in 8-1-2.

What phase is it currently in and when is it expected to go through 8-1-2?

[Ntxw]

If you haven't been following the MJO is trending towards amplification in 8-1-2.

What phase is it currently in and when is it expected to go through 8-1-2?

7 and forecasted to be in 2 by mid-month.

[Portastorm]

You have to laugh at the run-to-run GFS. It's like a slot machine. Put another coin in and pull the handle every 6 hours for a completely different solution. I have not identified any model trend yet. They all have different solutions, often with each run. Give it another 2-3 days for some agreement to appear and a trend to be identified.

Although, I know there is truth to what you were saying, part of me thinks you were saying this because you like it HOT lol

If it showed 90’s everyday I think you would say the GFS was always preforming properly lol

There's a lot of truth to what I'm saying. I'm telling our clients the same thing. Wait until maybe 24 hours to 36 hours before any winter weather event. Only then may we have a good idea what might happen. And even then, there will be model divergence.

By the way, the GFS is often right when it predicts 90s between late May and September.

If I had a dollar for every time wxman57 has been right about this very thing ... well, I'd be treating y'all to a nice steak dinner at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse.

No need for anyone to be jumping off the ledge at this point ... long ways to go and the models almost always underestimate Arctic airmass plunges into Texas.

[cheezyWXguy]

12Z GFS brings the storm back.

https://i.ibb.co/KLN9PzB/IMG-0101.png


https://i.ibb.co/jMPvHxf/IMG-0102.png

Gone are the big totals. And looks like a snow hole over DFW.

But I guess when you full 2ft, down to nothing, baby steps back in the right are good.

I'm tempted to stay off of here until Tuesday.

I am about to head out for the funeral, stay positive everyone and keep the faith.

The snow hole over dfw is due to borderline temps, I generally disregard it as it seems the models exaggerate the urban heat island effect in cold air advection regimes like this.

4-6” totals across isn’t something I would sneeze at, but snow depth on this run if taken verbatim would probably be next to nothing due to intervals of rain in between. If we want something like yesterday’s 18z gfs, we need the system to speed up its transit so that precip onset occurs during the day on Wednesday. This run doesn’t really kick things off til Thursday evening, and the timing is far from consistent.

All this to say, I think you have the right idea to wait until early next week to start holding your breath.

[TeamPlayersBlue]

Alot to unpack before this event. Still a tad far away IMO, you can see that with the GFS, but I'm becoming less optimistic for my SE Tx folks.
Forecasting temps will be interesting. Alot of snow will be put down by the system this Sun/Mon and could change the rain snow line for someone.

Also, still very optimistic for what im seeing in mid-Jan. If someone misses out on this event, hopefully mid-Jan can deliver.

[Stratton23]

Yel im already expecting to be disappointed here in se texas, model trends are garbage

[txtwister78]

GFS has highs in the plains Wednesday afternoon folks in the 30's. Where's the true arctic air? It's hung up in Ontario but that's not going to get it done here. Not enough cold this go around. Highs in the 40's in the panhandle and into Oklahoma Thursday as the system ejects out with mid to low 30's across the Hill Country. Borderline is an understatement.

It's there and headed south. Temps are 35-45 F below normal in our source region with 1048 Arctic HP in southern Canada with another one right on its heels in the Yukon. How many times have we seen Models overestimate modifying temps too quickly ? It happens almost every single arctic outbreak without fail. It's the coldest time of year climatologically with a fresh snowpack underneath the Arctic HP - I believe it's more logical to lean towards the colder side of guidance and not verbatim model output

https://images.weatherbell.com/model/gfs-deterministic/can/t2m_f_anom/1735905600/1735905600-s2SoDYaDpcw.png
https://images.weatherbell.com/model/gfs-deterministic/can/mslp_anom/1735905600/1735905600-mNVP305IlVo.png

I completely agree with models underestimating cold down here but when I see temps in the plains in the 30's and upper 20's mid-week via the operationals (our main target period), that's not an indication of arctic cold being bottled up (damming) as models tend to do courtesy of the Rockies defect or underestimating. I've seen that movie before. This isn't that.

I also agree the cold air starts out in the source region but the majority of that arrives well before the system out west impacts our area later in the week. What I don't see is anything reinforcing what arrives to start the week which again is cold relative to averages but seems to be more transient now than hanging around long enough to deliver. Again, which makes the timing of the system out west even more important.

We shall see though.

[Ntxw]

GFS has highs in the plains Wednesday afternoon folks in the 30's. Where's the true arctic air? It's hung up in Ontario but that's not going to get it done here. Not enough cold this go around. Highs in the 40's in the panhandle and into Oklahoma Thursday as the system ejects out with mid to low 30's across the Hill Country. Borderline is an understatement.

It's there and headed south. Temps are 35-45 F below normal in our source region with 1048 Arctic HP in southern Canada with another one right on its heels in the Yukon. How many times have we seen Models overestimate modifying temps too quickly ? It happens almost every single arctic outbreak without fail. It's the coldest time of year climatologically with a fresh snowpack underneath the Arctic HP - I believe it's more logical to lean towards the colder side of guidance and not verbatim model output

https://images.weatherbell.com/model/gfs-deterministic/can/t2m_f_anom/1735905600/1735905600-s2SoDYaDpcw.png
https://images.weatherbell.com/model/gfs-deterministic/can/mslp_anom/1735905600/1735905600-mNVP305IlVo.png

I completely agree with models underestimating cold down here but when I see temps in the plains in the 30's and upper 20's mid-week via the operationals (our main target period), that's not an indication of arctic cold being bottled up (damming) as models tend to do courtesy of the Rockies defect or underestimating. I've seen that movie before. This isn't that.

I also agree the cold air starts out in the source region but the majority of that arrives well before the system out west impacts our area later in the week. What I don't see is anything reinforcing what arrives to start the week which again is cold relative to averages but seems to be more transient now than hanging around long enough to deliver. Again, which makes the timing of the system out west even more important.

We shall see though.

Northern stream brings in a surge of colder air (at least above the surface) if there is a phase, with lower thickness. At the same time at the surface SW flow is trying to erode the cold air. As you said timing is everything, it's definitely a tighter window with the latest guidance. If there is no or limited phasing then the erosion will be greater.

[Lagreeneyes03]

ICON looks great on a snowfall map but that looks more typical of an elevation type event out in west Texas and as you get closer to the DFW metroplex precip never quite makes it or transitions to liquid. Temp profiles borderline elsewhere with surface temps in the mid to upper 30's across N TX. A lot of moisture (maybe too much with dews climbing in the low 30's Thursday afternoon) without enough cold air around.

I also remember one point hearing there's the geographical area East/Northeast of the DFW that those mountains tend to bottle up cold air that tend to seep down from that area so that could also play a role we're kind of in a bowl.

Still not zero in plenty of time for things to change.

I think you may be referring to the Ouchita mountains effect on East Texas perhaps? I don't think they affect DFW as much as they do from let's say a line from Paris/Sulphur Springs and points east. I have seen this feature brought up periodically when talking about winter weather events and severe storms. Hopefully someone can give more insight, but I think it was a warmer air damming feature that keeps ETX icy while NCTX might get sleet/snow.

[txtwister78]

When you're trying to get enough cold and precip to mix down south for snow (as most know on here), the individual details become increasingly the most important as you get closer to the actual target period. The nowcast pattern on a map doesn't always tell the whole story in regard to what the outcome ends up looking like. Seen it too many times across Texas over the years. Makes you love the weather either way because not even our best models can read mother nature sometime. Hopefully for those of us who love snow, mother nature surprises next week.

[Cpv17]

If you haven't been following the MJO is trending towards amplification in 8-1-2.

What phase is it currently in and when is it expected to go through 8-1-2?

7 and forecasted to be in 2 by mid-month.

Isn’t that too fast? Don’t phases 3,4,5 suck for us during the winter? Was hoping you’d say it wouldn’t reach phase 2 till mid February lol

[Ntxw]

What phase is it currently in and when is it expected to go through 8-1-2?

7 and forecasted to be in 2 by mid-month.

Isn’t that too fast? Don’t phases 3,4,5 suck for us during the winter? Was hoping you’d say it wouldn’t reach phase 2 till mid February lol

There is some lag and there's no definitive verification it will be that fast, it can slow down if the background favors it like how it crawled through 6. I think we're good until end of January and the opening days of February. After that, if I'm being honest the trajectory of the MJO would then not be favorable on the right side. But like anything else that's trying to predict it a month away.

If you're using 1977 and 1985 for progression analogs, after late Jan/Feb cold period...it warms up and nothing much happens the rest of those winters.