A strong winter storm is developing across northwest Texas today and will spread a major ice and snow storm to our north. For East Texas this system will bring a round of very heavy rain with one to two inches likely for most of the area with a few localized spots receiving up to three inches. We are not anticipating any flooding problems at this time however, the will be ponding of water on roadways and some areas could see localized flooding during the heaviest rainfall tonight.
The big question on everyone’s mind is will we see any ice or snow with this system. As stated above, there will be a major winter storm to our north. The amount of snow and ice that falls to our north will actually have an impact on our forecast and could cause some areas to see a sleet and snow mixture before the precipitation moves out. The best chance of this occurring is from Terrell to Quitman to Mt. Pleasant and points north and west. It also still appears the lowest levels of the atmosphere will remain saturated through early Saturday morning. This could produce a period of freezing drizzle from 10PM Friday through about 3AM Saturday. This drizzle would be very light but could cause a few problems on elevated surfaces.
I will end with this little tid-bit of information. The last system we had like this in December that produced a band of snow to our north caused temperatures to drop much quicker than our forecast models indicated. This is where the human element to forecasting is really important. Temperatures were around 5 degrees colder than forecast and hit the freezing mark much. This was all due to a band of ice and snow to our north. So I do feel we will hit the freezing mark a little earlier tomorrow evening than the forecast models area showing now. This forecast will likely change over the next 24 hours as we get accumulating snow to our north so stay tuned to your East Texas News Leader for the latest.
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