Cold Air Soon

Monday, November 10th 2014, 4:31 am

By: Alan Crone

If you're not a fan of cold air, you may need to book a flight to south Florida.   A strong arctic cold front will roll over the area later evening bringing a very cold air mass to the region for the remainder of the near-term future. The front will move across the area tonight with a low chance of precipitation for most of the area but will bring unseasonably cold air to the state. Any precip would be very light and mainly across extreme eastern sections of OK or southeastern Kansas for a few hours tonight and overnight. The data and pattern suggest we could have some wintry precipitation possibilities next weekend into early next week. This will get a lot of attention but we're a good 6 to 7 days out from this period and I'll remind us all that things can and do change from run to run and day to day. This is why we're continually looking at data and making updates to the forecast. In other words, we shouldn't get too excited about any wintry precip possibilities, even though we will be mentioning the possibility in the late periods of the forecast.

The weather today will feature unseasonably warm air with daytime highs moving into the mid-70s along with gusty southwest winds at 15 to 25 mph. The arctic front is scheduled to arrive tonight around 9pm to midnight, but this front will more than likely arrive earlier than model projections. We'll bump the frontal passage up an hour or two this evening with strong north winds and rapidly dropping temperatures.   Any precipitation will be confined to extreme eastern or southeastern OK into western Arkansas, and mainly in the form of a slight shower or drizzle directly behind the front for a small period of time. The winds may be very strong and could support a wind advisory.

The shallow cold air mass will drop highs Tuesday into the lower or mid-40s with northeast winds after morning lows in the mid-30s. A second and third surge of the arctic air will drop southward bringing morning lows in the 20s and afternoon highs Wednesday near 39 and Thursday into the mid or upper 30s. These cold readings are expected to remain from Friday into Saturday.

Saturday into the early part of next week is the tough part. The EURO is extremely cold and wet with a disturbance arriving out of the southwest bringing snow into the state Saturday, Sunday, and into Monday, eventually carving out a closed low dropping across north TX Monday.   The GFS is not as cold, and is not as wet with the precipitation possibilities, but would offer a slight chance for some snow or sleet Saturday across extreme Eastern OK and western Arkansas with very little chance Sunday into Monday.   We're anticipating the data will become better aligned with run to run consistency during the next few days allowing us a better chance of highlighting the weekend forecast with higher confidence levels. At this point, the confidence level remains low for the weekend.   I'll more than likely keep a slight chance of wintry precip for both days of the weekend at this point. But changes are most definitely anticipated for this portion of the forecast.

Thanks for reading the Monday Morning weather discussion and blog.

Have a super great day!