HOUSTON – I’ve been answering this question a LOT in the past 24 hours. “Why did our temperatures stay so cold Wednesday??” Or some variation of this question.
SEE ALSO: Houston mayor checks on residents sheltering from bitter cold weather
The viewers weren’t wrong. We were forecasting highs Wednesday to get into the low to mid-40s. However, we did get out of the low 30s with some areas staying in the upper 20s all day! Yeah ...
So What Happened?
Take a look at the visual satellite image from yesterday mid-afternoon:
With the cold, shallow airmass that invaded Texas late Tuesday into Wednesday, sometimes, our weather computer models have a hard time locking into just how cold the air REALLY is and will be too “warm” which can throw off the anticipated forecast numbers for the rest of the day.
Arctic cold air masses like the one currently over Houston can sometimes squeeze out just enough moisture to create a blanket of thick clouds over a small area, but not vertically tall enough to make rain/snow/sleet. But they sure can wreck a forecast!
We’re still seeing a measure of this model bias for a warmer than what is actually being shown trend on Thursday. Check out what the current temps were at 10 a.m.:
Still pretty cold, no? However, if we were to look at what the American weather model was “saying” the temp SHOULD be at that same hour, we see the problem:
The issue is that the weather model doesn’t “see” the strength of the cold, shallow air that is overhead this week. Based on the mathematics, even if we bottomed out in the 20s, we should be able to have temps recover as soon as the sun rises and starts to warm up the ground. Therein lies the problem! The shallow air and cloud cover weren’t “seen” by this model and therefore, the numbers were way warmer than what they actually were.
EXPLAINER: Why Thursday’s cold snap will NOT be Snowstorm 2.0 🥶
This is an error that meteorologists deal with from time to time in scenarios like the one we’re in now. So, we apologize for blowing the forecast on Wednesday but we’ve made adjustments for Thursday and Friday. Either way, bundle up, we’re not done with winter yet!
