11:20am Late Morning Blog Update – Historic Winter Storm Well Underway – Conditions Deteriorate This Afternoon

By Jenny Brown

February 14, 2021

The much-advertised historic winter storm is underway this morning with conditions expected to deteriorate quickly by this afternoon and during the overnight hours. Snow from earlier this morning across parts of north central Texas and the DFW metroplex continues to shift off to the northeast. Further west, our next round of heavier snow is already impacting areas from San Angelo up to Wichita Falls and from Pecos up to just west of Lubbock. These bands of heavier snow will continue to drift east/northeast through the afternoon and evening hours and are expected to reach the I-35 corridor by about 2-3pm and the I-45 corridor by around 4 to 5pm. Further south, a wintry mix of freezing rain, sleet and snow will be the predominant form of precipitation this afternoon for areas near and south of the I-10 corridor; however, most of this will transition over to snow during the overnight hours into early Monday morning. Regardless of timing, roadways are already slick from this morning’s rounds of snow. TxDot is doing their darndest to keep the bridges treated and the roads sanded along our major highways, but travel will still be greatly impacted today and especially this afternoon, overnight and tomorrow morning. If you get stranded due to an accident or road closure somewhere…you will be there for quite awhile and likely to be hypothermic by the time anyone finds you. And think of those that have to come rescue you putting their lives in danger as well.

***If you do not have to get out…if you are not required to be on the roads due to your job or for emergency reasons…STAY HOME. We cannot stress this enough. ***

Here’s the latest high-resolution forecast model loop to show how the radar is expected to shape up over the next 18 hours. As we always say, don’t get too fixated on exactly where the heaviest precipitation is expected to fall, but this will give everyone a good general idea of how things will shape up. We’ll continue to post updates today and overnight as this major winter event continues to develop.