First Alert Weather Day: dangerous cold lingers in North Texas with a chance of snow
NORTH TEXAS — A First Alert Weather Day remains in effect through Wednesday morning due to continuing dangerous "feels-like" temperatures. By Wednesday afternoon, highs will still be chilly but will warm well above freezing, so our First Alert Weather Day will come to an end.
We're in it on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day though. Temps are in the low 30s Monday afternoon, and the air is dry. At 4:30 p.m., the dew point at DFW is 1°, but we've seen dew points in the negatives. That is incredibly dry.
In fact, it's so dry in the lower levels (below 5,000 feet) that snow is sublimating before reaching the ground. If you didn't know, sublimation is where a substance changes from a solid to a gas, skipping the liquid stage altogether. So, our First Alert Radar is showing snow, particularly to the west/northwest of Tarrant County, but it's not reaching the ground.
If we get any flurries to reach the ground, it's not expected to cause travel impacts/accumulations in North Texas. Of course, that's a different story to the south and east. The counties highlighted in purple are under a winter weather advisory, where some minor accumulations could result in slick spots – particularly on elevated surfaces. The pink counties are under a winter storm warning – there have been plenty of stories where this Gulf low is wreaking havoc across the southeast and will for the next couple of days.
It appears we're going to miss the precipitation in North Texas, this time. But the cold remains. Some spots will feel like the single digits Tuesday morning, especially to the north and west.
Sunshine will warm temps into the mid-30s Tuesday afternoon, but wind chills remain around freezing at best.
The 50s sure are sounding nice at this point… we'll get there Wednesday afternoon, and we'll be near 60 by Friday. Yes, a few showers return to the forecast this weekend, but it doesn't look like a washout.
