Big Cold Arrives Friday

Few worries about the weather the rest of the day, mild conditions along with some clouds:

Tomorrow it'll be even warmer. The humidity will be increasing rapidly tonight. Tomorrow we'll have passing showers, especially in our eastern counties. The rain chances actually start for the morning commute and continue through the day:

Enjoy those temperatures in the 70's - they are leaving for a while. A strong cold front will bring in the coldest air of the season early Friday. We'll have some storms and brief heavy rain withe frontal passage:

This looks to happen very early in the morning on Friday. If the storms or heavy rain doesn't wake you up the winds might. They'll be very strong behind the front as the cold air rushes in. Gusts will get over 35mph. Wind chills be all the way down into the 20's by late morning:

We'll likely be in the 60's around midnight across the metroplex. By the morning commute the temperatures will be still dropping down to the 30's.

We'll like see some sleet mixed in with this rain by afternoon. Below you can see our in-house forecast model bringing in the cold front in the early morning. Notice the temperatures in the mid-30's by noon. Also notice the areas of pink across our western counties. Where the air is just a few degrees cooler the cold rain with some sleet becomes sleet and freezing rain. For most of the day the ground will be above freezing but if this sleet continues to be around all day into the night it could start to accumulate on the roads. Notice that Futuresky Forecast keeps this frozen precip. in our western counties all they way into early Saturday morning. We'll continue to monitor this situation, our first brush with a wintry mix this season:

We are going to be threatened twice with a possible wintry mix over the next several days. This cold air is going to be around all weekend (highs on Saturday and Sunday will stay in the 40's). With the cold air at the surface a very powerful upper level low will swing right over Texas on Monday. As it approaches it will start to trigger rain; where the air is cold enough it will fall as snow. That is in the forecast for west Texas and parts of the Panhandle. We could again get a wintry mix in our northern counties along the Red River on Monday. This is a very tricky forecast, we'll up dating it as we get closer.

Join Jeff Jamison at 4p and Larry Mowry at 5p and 6p for the latest on this winter weather threat.