Good Sunday morning! The snow has come and gone and believe it or not, the upper-level storm system that yesterday morning was right on top of Amarillo…is now in Wisconsin this morning! In its wake is strong winds and sub-zero wind chills this morning. By the way, before I get too far along in this “forecast discussion”, I have had some questions about our SchoolNet App (pic attached). You can find it (it’s free!) in Google Play for your Android phone/tablet or in the App Store (it’s free) for your iPad/iPhone devices! Just do a search for “KVII SchoolNET” and it will appear. Download it and enjoy! We recently changed up the site list so that the site’s city (or nearby city) shows up first, then the site name. We did this because we had folks complain that they didn’t know the location of the ranches on our network, but did know the names of the cities that they were closeby. Fair enough. Notice that the attached pic has our site at Westover Jr. High as “Amarillo-Westover Park”. Trust me, the SchoolNet app is VERY handy to have on your mobile device! By the way, to get the “wind chill” values to show up, simply click once on “Temperature” and you will be able to see the wind chill, heat index and the current temperature. Okay, let’s get back to today’s weather. The storm is long gone and the strongest winds and lowest wind chill values will be this morning with readings as low as -15 degrees! A “Wind Chill Advisory” will remain in effect for most of the TX Panhandle and ALL of the OK Panhandle until 9am. The snowfall ranged from nothing over the far eastern and southeastern TX Panhandle (Childress, Wellington, Memphis) to 11 inches of snow in Clovis and Portales! Thanks to EVERYBODY who sent in your snowfall total pics and reports yesterday! It really helps with forecast verification on our side and helps make the next snowfall forecast better! There was also some sleet that fell from Canadian to Wheeler to Groom that made for sick roads. If you are reading this and getting ready to travel to anywhere here on the High Plains, the best road conditions will be this afternoon after the sun has been able to warm us up (a little) and melt some of the snowfall. The roads this morning are SLICK AND HAZARDOUS everywhere and there were so many accidents reported twice yesterday here in and around Amarillo that the DPS couldn’t get to them all! I know many of you will be heading to church this morning and simply allow plenty of extra driving time and SLOW DOWN! For those of you heading back from visiting Grandma’s or friends for New Year’s, please do the same and if you can, wait until this afternoon to venture back home. It will be a very cold day today with a high temperature of only 26 degrees despite the abundant sunshine! Winds will be their worst this morning from the north and northwest at 10-20 mph, then shift back around to the south at 5-15 mph this afternoon. Yes, there will be plenty of sunshine today, but warmth? Nope. We will be able to melt some, but surely not all of the snow that fell yesterday (especially with that 11 inches of snow in Clovis!) Tonight will be very cold with low temperatures dropping down into the teens to around 20 degrees. Winds will blow from the south around 10-20 mph, which will only make for very frigid wind chill values that will drop to as low as -10 to zero degrees! Skies will be clear to mostly clear. As the kids head back to school tomorrow, we are looking at perhaps, the warmest day of the week? Yes, the snowpack will take a beating tomorrow as sunny to mostly sunny skies prevail and breezy southerly and southwesterly winds at 15-25 mph, with some higher gusts in the 35-40 mph range prevail. Yes, that will make for wind chill values in the 20s in the afternoon, but with high temperatures rising into the 30s and 40s, the snow will really start to melt away and might be totally gone in areas that only got a few inches of snow. The snowpack in Clovis will not be totally melted, however. Just as things were starting to warm up, here comes another shot of very cold, Arctic air that will now arrive early Tuesday morning. Now, it appears that we will get this shot of cold air in two waves and the first will knock our high temperatures into the 30s on Tuesday and then even colder for Wednesday! On Tuesday, winds will switch around to the northwest and north at 10-20 mph and with some partly cloudy skies, it will look colder than Monday and when you walk outside, the temperature will confirm that notion! Wednesday looks to be VERY COLD and the computer models (see the attached Canadian, European and GFS (American), all show a very small pocket of cold air aloft making its way through northeastern NM, the western OK Panhandle (Boise City) and then into Eastern New Mexico and the very far western TX Panhandle (cities such as Tucumcari, Clovis, Portales, NM, and Dalhart, Adrian, Vega, Hereford and Friona, TX) These locations MIGHT see a dusting of snow as the atmosphere will squeeze out a very small amount of moisture with this pocket of cold air moving by, but by NO MEANS is this as strong as the storm system that just plowed through here! Most of us will simply see partly to occasionally mostly cloudy skies on Wednesday and high temperatures in the 20s! Tack on a northeasterly wind at 15-25 mph and wind chill values from zero to -10 degrees will be common ALL DAY LONG. Yuck! We won’t warm up much on Thursday, but we will warm up above freezing as the winds swing back around to the southwest at 10-20 mph by the afternoon hours and the mercury rises back into the 30s to around 40 degrees by late day. Yes, that’s an improvement from the 20s, but with that wind blowing from the southwest, wind chills in the 20s and teens will occur, so don’t break out those shorts just yet! TGI Friday’s weather will feature yet another cold front showing up first thing in the morning with northeasterly winds at 10-20 mph. By the afternoon hours, the winds will have swung all the way back around to the south at 5-15 mph. High temperatures on TGI Friday will be a few degrees cooler than Thursday, but highs in the lower to mid 30s will be common. Keep in mind that the 30-year average high for Friday is 46 degrees, so these readings are still about 10-15 degrees colder than average! Next weekend’s forecast is still somewhat uncertain. Yesterday, the GFS (American) model was the only one showing any precipitation chances for our area and I told you that we would need to watch “the trend” with these computer models. The “trend” is the direction that the majority of them are moving toward. Yesterday, the majority was dry for our area. Today, the majority is wet! Now, before you go grab that snow shovel, the amounts of snow…IF they happen, look light. In fact, if you check the attached “Deterministic Computer Model” data from the GFS and European Models, they show an inch or snow or less. The Canadian Computer Model, has the most snow at 2-3 inches. So, we will watch “the trend” closely as this could be our next chance at getting more moisture, albeit frozen, here on the High Plains. Based on today’s data, I will go with mostly cloudy to cloudy skies on Saturday with that chance of some light snow or snow flurries. High temperatures will be in the mid to upper 30s, so any snow that does fall (Saturday morning) may not be around by the afternoon with temperatures above freezing! Winds will switch directions from the southwest in the morning at 10-20 mph to the north and northeast in the afternoon at 5-15 mph. NEXT Sunday’s weather will be sunnier, drier and a little warmer, but not by much! In fact, high temperatures in the lower to mid 40s are expected as northwesterly winds in the morning at 5-15 mph, switches back around to the south at 5-15 mph in the afternoon hours. It should be a pretty nice day and again, IF any snow does indeed fall late Friday or Saturday morning, it should be melted away by Sunday’s sunshine and high temps in the 40s. So, there you have it. It looks like a CHILLY week with a couple of days with highs below freezing (again) as more Arctic air invades the United States. The chances of snow this week on Wednesday and Friday Night/Saturday morning look slim at best, but we will watch these (especially Saturday’s storm) closely for you. Thanks again for all the kind words yesterday and all the reports….they are greatly appreciated! Take care, stay warm today and have a great rest of your weekend! I’ll see you back here first thing tomorrow morning!
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 12:23:35 +0000
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