Light Wintry Mix Possible Sunday...

Although our Friday will feature sunshine and mild temperatures in the 70s, Old Man Winter will come back strong towards the second half of the weekend.  

Here are some of the ingredients:

Shallow cold air arrives Saturday night as shown above.

 

Upper level energy (red box) arrives Sunday (left image) and a light mix breaks out over parts of Texoma. NAM forecast precipitation types are shown on the right and indicate a mix of light rain, or sleet but with temperatures near freezing, this would likely be a mix of light freezing rain, drizzle, & sleet. 

NAM forecast 500 mb vorticity valid 1PM Sunday (left) & NAM forecast precip. type (right).

*Timing: Light wintry mix of freezing rain, drizzle, & sleet develops in the morning, ending by mid to late afternoon. Low impacts expected but still could be some icy spots on elevated surfaces. 

 

Why are we thinking freezing rain and sleet as opposed to snow? The details lie in our forecast sounding shown below. This is a forecast showing us what the temperatures are as we get higher up in the sky. The space in the blue box shows very shallow but below freezing air settling in close to the ground BUT as you get higher in the sky, the air warms up considerably. This means that as rain drops form high up in the sky, they will melt in the warm layer but then either freeze on contact (freezing rain/drizzle) or refreeze into sleet pellets. 

Thanks for reading and following along! Stay with the SkyWARN 7 weather team for updates through this weekend. Your latest SkyWARN 7 video forecast can be found @ www.kswo.com/weather