Daily Blog and Forecast Discussion -- March 2, 2023

Daily Blog and Forecast Discussion

Brady's Weather Page

3:18 pm CST Thursday March 2, 2023

SHORT TERM (Tonight through Friday night)

Go Outside. Enjoy this nice weather while you can. In just a few short hours... It won't be like this, not until Saturday morning anyway. It would be an understatement to say that we are in the "Calm before the storm"...and that's quite literally. We have a smorgasbord of weather in the short term so let's dive in. 

Let's start with tonight: As I type this, an already intense closed low system has dug into northern Mexico. This system will eject northeastward over the next few hours, and it is does, It is going to bring a severe weather outbreak to portions of Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. It's going to be a long night for them. As for us, we are also in for a long night, as a warm front is going to lift north through the region. Storms are expected to develop along this warm front and some of them could become severe with all hazards possible. As the night goes on, the aforementioned closed low system is going to become negatively tilted and do two thing. 1.) Pull more moisture/Instability into the region. 2.) Make the wind blow as if there was a severe storm over the entire area. This combination of intense wind fields, SB CAPE nearing or exceeding 500 j/kg and strong forcing will open the door for severe storms, with mainly a damaging straight line wind and tornado threat, but large hail is also possible in the stronger storms. While I think it is going to be a long night, and will probably have several warnings issued, I think the bigger issue will come tomorrow. A very very (use your favorite adjective!) tight pressure gradient is expected to take shape over the entire area and bring southwest winds of 25-35 mph sustained with wind gusts potentially over 60 mph!! For only the second time in 10 years or more, we will have a High Wind Warning in effect for tomorrow. The reason this is so significant is because, the winds will really get going right after the storms pass. As a result, the already saturated soils will make much easier for trees and power lines to come down with the strong wind gusts. I expect numerous trees to come down and numerous power outages to occur tomorrow. This means that you will need to have your cell phones 100% CHARGED tonight and make sure your weather radio has fresh batteries and is audible so that if you do loose power, you have more than one way of receiving weather alerts. This is going to be a potentially dangerous and unique situation so we should treat it as such. The winds will begin to subside after sunset tomorrow and things will be much calmer. 

As far as the flood threat is concerned, there is light at the end of the tunnel. I suspect an additional 3-4 inches of rain will fall area wide, and that certainly will exacerbate any flooding that is already going on. We maintain the Flood Watch through noon tomorrow, and that could get canceled sooner if rainfall totals lessen in the models even more. 

LONG TERM: 

Once the wind and rain ends tomorrow, a much better period of weather is expected. The weekend looks quiet and our next chance of showers looks to return Monday and Monday night. There could be some thunder in these, but will wait on additional model guidance before including a mention in the 7 day forecast.