Will East Texas Have a White Valentines?
Nearly a month ago, much of Deep East Texas was under a blanket of snow. A major snow event dumped anywhere from an inch to 8 inches of the white stuff in the Pineywoods.
Is round two on the way, just in time for Valentine's?
The answer is....yes, no, or maybe. It's fun to look at the various weather computer models originating from different sources, especially when you're still a week away from the weather they're trying to forecast. We do know it will be getting significantly colder by the end of next week. But when it comes to what type of precipitation we can expect, that's where the differences start.
For instance, the CMC (Canadian Meteorological Center) model doesn't show any accumulation of snow or ice for Deep East Texas late next week. A slight accumulation may happen in central portions of Louisiana by Friday, February 12. The CMC was the model that was most accurate concerning our January snowfall. A week before our snow event, their models were showing up to 8 inches of snow could fall from the Brazos Valley to Deep East Texas.
The ECMWF model, which originates out of Europe, believes some wintry precipitation could very well fall across the Pineywoods by February 12. In fact, this model is showing a rather significant ice event for the Texas Hill Country as well as south central Louisiana.
Then, there's the GFS model which originates out of the National Weather Service of the U.S. As of right now, they show a significant snow event which should maybe get as far south as Tyler/Longview. We could still see snowfall in Deep East Texas, but little or no accumulation is forecast with this model.
So, as you can see, there is a lot of uncertainty concerning wintry precipitation late next week across our area. One thing, however, is for certain. Over the course of the seven days, these models will change. It's just what happens with weather models when you're doing medium range forecasts. The changes may be subtle or they may be deeply contrary to the original forecast.
Whatever happens, we'll keep you up to date on air and with our app with the possible wintry weather late next weekend. At least for now, it seems that darned ground hog was right.