CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — South Texas is about a month into winter, and while winter weather is not common in the Coastal Bend, it’s not impossible or something we have not experienced before.
Every now and then during the winter season, a blast of arctic air brings us significantly colder temperatures, up to freezing level at 32F or less.
Last week we saw the first few cold weather alerts of the season and they will likely be issued again next week. Another arctic cold front will make its way to us by Saturday afternoon-early evening.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF WINTRY PRECIP?
With strong precipitation chances forecast for next week, wintry precipitation can not be ruled out. Wintry precipitation is any type of precipitation that occurs under cold conditions. The main types are rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain.
Precipitation falls as snow when the air temperatures throughout the atmosphere remain cold at or below freezing. Whereas, for rain to occur the whole bottom layer of the atmosphere remains warm with cold air aloft.
When we are talking about sleet, you have a shallow warm layer in between two cold layers. Think of a sandwich. As snow falls into that warm layer where the temperature is above freezing it partially melts, then it refreezes when it reaches the surface cold layer into ice pellets that bounce off the ground.
For freezing rain to occur the warm air in between the cold air is relatively deep. The snowflakes that fall into this deep warm layer end up melting off completely and have no time to refreeze by the time they reach the shallow cold air at the surface. So the rain becomes super-cooled once it makes contact with the ground or objects and freezes.
This makes for extremely hazardous conditions with ice forming on roads, bridges, and more.
HOW DO YOU ACCURATELY FORECAST WINTER PRECIPITATION?
Forecasting for winter precipitation can become tricky because the different variations in temperatures at different levels of the atmosphere can significantly change the type of precipitation we see at the surface.
Therefore, it is difficult to accurately predict whether we can see snow,sleet, rain or a mix. When you have a mix of different types of frozen precipitation then we call it a wintry mix.
Make sure to check on the forecast as we head into next week so you’re weather aware and prepared!