Much-needed rainfall is on the way to Texas this week. We won’t have an arctic airmass to support widespread winter precipitation, so most of Texas will remain safely above freezing and enjoy purely liquid precipitation. However, that may not be true for parts of the Texas Panhandle and West Texas, as discussed in this morning’s Texas Weather Roundup.

Those using our free mobile app will have to click on the animation above to get it to play. The timing for rain chances remains on-track. Our weather-maker this week will be a very slow-moving upper-level low pressure. That upper-low will provide strong lift, and pull in abundant moisture into Texas. A few showers may begin Tuesday evening in eastern New Mexico, the Permian Basin, and West Texas. Rain chances will increase markedly on Wednesday across the Texas Panhandle, Northwest Texas, West Texas, the Big Country, and the Concho Valley. Those precipitation chances will continue into Thursday.

By Thursday night and Friday, rain chances will begin moving east to encompasses the eastern two-thirds of Texas. Rain will continue across the eastern third of Texas Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. We may see rain finally conclude Saturday night, though a slower progression of the upper-level storm system may prolong those rain chances into Sunday.

Texas Panhandle/West Texas Snow Chances

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Just enough cold air, along with dynamic cooling from the upper-level low, may allow rain to change over to a wet snow Wednesday night into Thursday morning, and Thursday night into Friday morning across parts of the Texas Panhandle and West Texas. This conditional element of the forecast will greatly depend on the track of the upper-level low (as in, a shift of fifty miles will change the forecast quite a bit), along with just enough cooler at the surface. We’re talking one to two degrees for the difference from a cold rain, or what could become an impactful winter storm.

The ‘worst case’ scenario would be a change over to heavy, wet snow with hourly snowfall rates over one inch per hour and potential thundersnow. That kind of snow could result in quite a bit of accumulation and travel impacts. The other side of the spectrum is that we don’t see ingredients line up, and we have a cold rain with temperatures in the upper 30s. A mix of the two would result in periods of rain and snow, along with a bit of snow accumulation. Unlike the Midwest or Northeast United States, many of our snow setups are driven by small-scale ingredients, just like many of our more potent severe weather days.

Even after we’re able to nail down the track of the upper-level low and that aspect of the forecast, we’ll still have to deal with smaller-scale ingredients that could locally enhance the prospect of winter weather. As it stands now, we’ll stick to the rain/snow mix with a bit of snow accumulation possible. However, for the Panhandle especially, understand we could have anything from a few snow flakes mixing in with rain, all the way to a major winter storm with thundersnow and a plowable snow. Welcome to the probabilistic world of weather!

We’ll see how tonight’s weather model data comes together, and perhaps we can start to throw out some snow numbers in our morning weather roundup. Check back tomorrow!