Arctic Air Is Building... Wanting To Move South...

From Chief Meteorologist Craig Carnesi...

Winter may not be done with us just yet. More on that in a minute.

After a very chilly start in the middle to upper 20s this morning we warmed nicely back into the middle 60s areawide. Expect a similar night tonight, just not quite as cold. I only expect lows to drop down into the upper 20s and lower 30s.

A cold front will arrive late tonight into Wednesday morning. This front won't push in with the strong winds we saw with Sunday's front, but it will keep afternoon highs in the lower 60s to upper 50s Thursday.

Beginning Thursday night and through Friday it still looks like moisture will try to return to the Big Country. Notice I said "try." Unfortunately some of the computer models have backed off from our slight chances of rain down to just a slim chance. I'm not dropping all chances of rain from the forecast just yet, but I'm not too excited about the chance of seeing measurable rainfall. For now though, Friday night looks to be our best shot for showers/drizzle.

By Saturday a stronger cold front will push any and all moisture out of the area and leave us with cool temperatures and clear skies. It looks like we'll see afternoon highs in the upper 40s to lower 50s across the area.

Looking at a couple of longer term models, a couple of things stand out. Number one, some of the models are trying to bring a cut-off low in from the West next Monday and Tuesday. If this were to pan out, we could be looking at rain chances then. Give me another 48 hours before I jump on that rain wagon. I've seen models show cut-off systems like this one day, then the next the system is no where to be found.

The other standout is a large area of Arctic air making a plung South. We're talking about air colder than some parts of the country have seen this Winter. Now, here's the catch, this is a 10 day out computer model. These models have a very large margin of error when you go 3 days out, much less another week on top of that. Some of the things you can see from these long range models are trends. Now, the trend would be that we could be setting up for a colder second half of winter than we saw for the first half.

Personally, I think there is a very good chance of a colder second half of February taking place. Only time will tell, but I wouldn't put up your winter clothes just yet.