Winter Storm Watch issued for portion of East Texas starting Thursday

EAST TEXAS — According to our news partner KETK’s Chief Meteorologist Carson Vickroy, “We’ve got one more day before our first, and hopefully only wintry event of the year. We’ll observe our third consecutive hard freeze tomorrow morning followed by temperatures being well below average tomorrow afternoon. (Highs in the low to middle 40s). The storm system is over the Rockies right now and will be making it in to Texas tomorrow night with the first bouts of precipitation arriving Thursday morning.

Precipitation will gradually increase throughout the day Thursday. I expect we’ll mostly snow/sleet north of highway 80 (1?-2?), with the highest amounts along and north of Interstate 30 (2?-4?+). Further south it gets more interesting. I’ve said over the last couple of days that places like Tyler, Longview, Jacksonville, & Henderson are in the wintry “Battlezone.” This means that precipitation type is unclear and could change several times during this event. This does create uncertainty with how much if any accumulation that we’d see. Based on what we’ve seen today, I’m keeping our accumulation map the same (see below), for now.

We won’t only be tracking temperatures at the surface, but temperatures aloft. During events like these, we’ll look at the temperature of the air aloft to determine the precipitation types. It’s common here in East Texas to see freezing rain, this is when we have a deep column of above freezing temperatures well above the surface. Rain drops refreeze on the surface. Sleet, that column of air is shallower, so the ice crystals will melt as the move through this layer. They’re less incumbered so they refreeze and hit the ground as an ice pellet. Snow occurs when the column of air aloft is subfreezing. It’ll be important to evaluate all data for any changes to the forecast. I would much prefer 3 inches of snow to 0.25? of ice. Neither has a particularly high chance of occurring. One argument in favor of sleet/freezing rain argument is the slower trend in the storm system could result in further warming of the crucial layer of air aloft. If this appears to be the case, I’ll amend the forecast to reflect the freezing rain potential, I’m not sold on it yet.”