KATC StormTeam 3 Weather BLOG

After a freezing and frosty Wednesday morning we’ll see a nice warm-up for Wednesday afternoon as mostly sunny skies works in concert with a developing southeasterly wind.  High and some mid-clouds will begin to invade late Wednesday with clouds thickening Wednesday night keeping our temperatures in the lower 40s.  A vigorous storm system in the Northern Rockies will race southeastward through the next 24 hours allowing for patchy light rain to develop for Thursday morning.  It appears that there will be little or no threat of any kind of wintry weather with this system as the precipitation should initiate below the freezing layer aloft.  The rain should be light in nature but more moderate rainfall rates may be possible through Thursday mid-morning.  The rain will depart the area well before the arctic air begins to settle in but do expect windy and much colder conditions to return for late Thursday night into Friday morning.  Temperatures should drop into the low-mid 20s for Friday morning while wind chills will likely drop into the teens.  Arctic air-masses are like molasses when the spill into the region and it appears that the coldest air will arrive Friday night into Saturday.  This should put our lows Friday night/Saturday morning near 20 (plus or minus a few degrees) with wind chills likely in the lower teens or single digits for Saturday morning.  It will likely be even colder Saturday night/Sunday morning without any wind with lows likely to approach the mid-upper teens.  Daytime highs will stay in the 30s both Friday and Saturday and if high clouds linger on Friday we may not make it much above freezing Friday afternoon.  This could become quite problematic for frozen pipe issues as we will likely see a 72 hour period where only a few hours will be above freezing.  The good news is that the long range outlook calls for much milder weather the second into the third week of the month…hopefully this will be the coldest weather we see all winter!