Couple Bouts Of Cold Rain Coming - But How Cold?

We've been searching for "true winter weather" in North Texas for the past several weeks.  Our search may bear fruit by late this week and over the weekend.  Let me emphasize up front: THESE LOOK TO BE 99% CHANCE COLD RAIN EVENTS.  It's the 1% chance of freezing precipitation we will want to explore and see if these chances grow as the weekend draws nearer.

First of all the brutal Arctic air that has been locked up in Canada is finally showing signs of coming south.  This has happened before back in January and mainly just affected the eastern 1/3 of the United States.  It appears a similar pattern will accompany this cold outbreak late this week.  Here's the NAM surface temperature forecast for Saturday evening.  Notice the severe cold over the northern U.S. with temps in the single digits and teens.  We are going to get a piece of this airmass into North Texas during the day Saturday.

We do expect rain to develop a day before on Friday, as seen below.  But temperatures should be safely above freezing...and actually into the 50s during this lighter rain event.

At this time it appears the coldest air will arrive in North Texas after the rain ends Friday night.  Clouds will hang around Saturday & Sunday with highs only the 30s and 40s.  Another disturbance will approach Sunday night into Monday morning.  This is when temperatures will be critical as too whether or not it's all rain or rain plus something more sinister.  Here's the European model output for rainfall from midnight Sunday night until 6am Monday morning.

At the same time, temperatures are forecast to be in the 32-35° range.  You can see the freezing line in Oklahoma as the heavier precipitation sets in.

This is going to be a game of timing Friday-Monday.  We know the cold air gets here, but do our disturbances that bring rain slow down or speed up.  Right now it just looks like a cold rain, but stay tuned!!!