AUSTIN, Texas – It’s looking very like that Central Texas will see a very hard freeze this weekend along with a wintry mix.
Timeline:
Winter Storm Watch for Central Texas
The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Watch for counties in Central Texas beginning Jan. 24 at 12 a.m. and lasting through Jan. 26 at 12 p.m.
The following counties are included:
- Gillespie
- Hays
- Caldwell
- Bastrop
- Blanco
- Lee
- Travis
- Llano
- Burnet
- Williamson
- Fayette
Areas just to our north are under a Winter Storm Watch already starting Friday night and lasting through Saturday night.
The Arctic air is still scheduled to push through starting late Friday night.
We will be freezing from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning.
Wind chills will drop into single digit territory by Sunday morning.
Dig deeper:
A potent upper low will glide over the frigid air to enhance the cloud cover and turn on the precipitation. The kind of precipitation depends on the temperature profile.
For now, it looks like the freezing layer of air will be close to the ground.
This would support rain changing over to freezing rain.
Then some sleet and snow flurries mixed in late Saturday night before drying out on Sunday.
The highest chances of a tenth of an inch of ice will be north and west of Austin.
It will be just cold rain Friday and Friday night and then rain freezing on contact late Saturday.
Why you should care:
Elevated roads will be the main concern for icing, along with isolated power outages with minor ice build up on the lines.
For now, the computer weather models keep the crippling and damaging ice storm just to our north.
We are at a LEVEL 3 out of 5 concern with this Winter Storm greatly impacting the area.
What you can do:
Pay close attention to the forecast as it could still change as we head closer to the weekend.
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The Source: Information from meteorlogist Zack Shields.
Great Job & the Team @ Latest & Breaking News | FOX 7 Austin for sharing this story.
