about the universe forum commander Shop Now Commanders Circle
Product List FAQs home Links Contact Us

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Coming of the Storm

This is Steven Petrick posting.

We are getting ready for a storm.

This one at least "feels" unusual.

The Weather Channel started running "winter storm watch" announcements last night (I have no idea when they started, but when I looked at the channel around 2200 CST, there they were). I cannot recall ever previously seeing a Winter Storm Watch, set to run from "Late Wednesday to Late Thursday" start late Monday.

The "week ahead" forecasts have continuously said "wintry mix" for Thursday, but this morning the forecast changed, much colder than previously (the high was at least a few degrees above freezing, now it is predicted to be more than ten degrees below freezing). The weather map they showed last night showed our area of the panhandle of Texas to be in the "pink" (for freezing rain) zone. And the long range forecast said it would be freezing rain changing over to snow.

So far, there has been no prediction of accumulation totals, and the weather channel still thinks (at least when I last saw it) that it will be a relatively fast moving front (here late Wednesday/early Thursday, gone late Thursday/Early Friday).

All of which means: Nothing may happen (there have been plenty of times when precipitation has been predicted with more than 90% certainty and we have seen not a drop), and we may be snowed into our homes (times when the chance of precipitation was less than 30% and we have gotten flooding rains).

So, tonight we are all going to stock up on emergency rations and make sure our cell phones are fully charged and our cars gas tanks are topped off. This avoids the rush that will surely take place tomorrow after work.