Warmer, Next Chance for Rain.

Despite the recent rainfall, the dormant vegetation and gusty winds can still cause wildfire issues as you can see here.  Although the governor did lift the area-wide burn ban, there are still some county burn bans in effect.  Gusty southerly winds will be an issue again on Friday, and with relative humidity levels dropping into the 30% range during the heat of the day there will once again be an enhanced wildfire threat. 

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For tonight, those southerly winds will be subsiding to around 10 mph or less and temperatures only dropping into the low-mid 40s, so a much milder start to our day on Friday.  We will also have sunny skies to start the day, but some high level cirrus clouds will be moving in by afternoon.  Still enough sunshine though for afternoon highs to reach the upper 60s to lower 70s.

Saturday will start off with a low level cloud deck and possibly some drizzle or patchy fog.  Look for those clouds to hang tough with little or no sunshine expected but nothing more in the way of rainfall except a few sprinkles or drizzle.  We will also have a light SE wind and that combination means another very mild day with morning lows near 50 and daytime highs well into the 60s.  By the way, the normal diurnal temperatures range at this time of year is 53/32.

Sunday may also start off with some patchy fog or drizzle, but we should get to see at least some afternoon sunshine.  Any sunshine at all together with a brisk SE breeze means another very mild day with morning lows in the 50s and daytime highs likely to make it into the mid 70s.

Sunday night into the day Monday will see our next rainmaker moving across the state with a decent shot at showers and perhaps even some thunder.  A little reluctant to get too carried away with our rain chances as you can see on our forecast page; after all, don’t want to scare it off as we certainly do need more rain. 

As you can see on the 7 day QPF, the heavier rainfall amounts once again will be well south of us and we are expected to be on the northern fringe of this particular storm system.  Of course, that was also the case this time last week when we were contemplating the future track and intensity of the system that gave us the soaking rains a couple of days ago. 

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With that in mind, thought a look at how the models are handling this next system would be instructive.  These maps are of the 500 mb level, or about 18,000’ above sea level.  The barbs indicate the wind speed and direction and the colors where the strongest winds are located, i.e. the jet stream at that level.

This first map was initialized on Tuesday, Feb 14 and shows the progged position of the storm center valid for Tuesday noon, Feb 21.  Notice the storm center is progged to be along the lower TX coast at that time. 

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The next map was initialized yesterday and is valid for the same time. 

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The third map was initialized today and is also valid for the same time frame.  Notice that the most recent run suggests a slight northward nudge in the location of the storm center and is also moving it along a little more quickly. 

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At any rate, those data runs have been pretty consistent and are why the QPF map has the heavier rainfall totals into far S TX.  However, it would not take much of a northward shift in the storm track to bring more rains our way and that is what happened with the system that brought our rains earlier this week. 

Keep in mind the system in question is currently well out in the Pacific and has not been sampled by our land based observational network which does create additional uncertainty.  As mentioned, we were dealing with a similar scenario this time last week and that system ended up taking a more northerly track which brought better rains further north for our state.  It remains to be seen if that will be the case this time around, although the data runs to this point certainly suggest the main storm center will be further south, in fact much further south.

Looking into the rest of next week and the end of the month, the outlook continues to suggest temperatures will average above normal and there will also be at least another chance or two for some scattered showers and perhaps even some thunder.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot