Arctic air is still scheduled to make its way into East Texas Next week. Right now it appears that a strong arctic front will move through the area late Monday or early Tuesday bringing the coldest temperatures of the New Year. Temperatures behind this front will more than likely remain in the 30s for highs next Wednesday and Thursday before winds begin to turn out of the southeast next Friday warming us back into the 50s. It also appears we will see a good deal of cloud cover during the middle part of next week which will actually help us out. 
Without the cloud cover we could easily drop into the lower teen next week during the night time hours. But thanks to the clouds, most areas will only drop into the lower to middle 20s, still cold but not quite as bad as we could be. We will also be watching a disturbance in the mid levels of the atmosphere on Wednesday. As with most arctic air masses, this one will be very dry. 
However, with this upper level energy a few snow flurries could be squeezed out across the area. As it looks right now no accumulation would occur thanks to the very dry air mass. Once this first batch of cold air moves out of the area our attention will focus to the possibility of an even colder air mass moving into the area the following week. The upper air pattern is forecast on Saturday the 15th shows the jet stream surging north over Alaska and northeastern Siberia.
This is typically a pattern that sends some of the coldest arctic outbreaks into the United States. This is the same pattern we saw last January that sent temperatures into the upper single digits and lower teen across East Texas. Right now it looks as though temperatures could be as low as 10 degrees in the area if what is forecast occurs.
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