Friday, November 13, 2009

Warm weather comes to an abrupt end next week

So far the month of November has been warm and dry giving us a chance to dry out from October’s deluge. Normally by now many areas of East Texas would have already experienced their first frost but this November we have been above normal temperature wise delaying the onset of frost and freezing temperatures. It looks as though this spell of mild weather will come to an abrupt end next week. A strong cold front in association with an area of low pressure will bring a chance of showers and thunderstorms late Sunday into Monday followed by much cooler weather. Right now it appears the area of low pressure will stall to our northeast Tuesday keeping cloudy and windy conditions and maybe even a sprinkle or two. The big story will be the temperatures behind the front. High temperatures Tuesday will struggle to reach the middle 50s thanks to lingering cloud cover. As the low finally moves away from the area Tuesday night, clouds should decrease and winds will die down. This is the perfect set up for what we call radiational cooling, were the Earth’s heat is able to escape the atmosphere causing rapid cooling after sunset. Right now it looks as though in our normally cooler locations, temperatures will be able to drop into the lower to middle 30s. This would produce frost in these areas for the first time this year. Right now we are calling for temperatures in the upper 30s to low 40s but looking at the raw data coming late this morning, a frost appears likely for some areas next week. So get ready for some big changes across East Texas.

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