Light chance for precipitation tonight, with messy winter weather system early next week | 1/20 AM

LAWTON, Okla. (KSWO) -

Good morning! Any cloud coverage we have this morning will gradually decrease between now and midday, becoming mostly sunny by the afternoon. Temperatures will warm up into the upper 50s and low 60s with winds out of the southeast at 10-15 mph.

An approaching disturbance will increase cloud coverage overnight, with mostly cloudy skies expected past midnight. Some light precipitation in the form of very isolated rain showers will pop-up across far northern counties along and near I-40, though I won’t rule out some light drizzle as far south as HW-62. While unlikely, areas along I-40 could see a brief chance at snowfall prior to sunrise. Temperatures early tomorrow morning will fall to the upper 30s with winds out of the southeast at 5-15 mph.

This weekend will be fairly nice overall, starting off with mostly/partly cloudy skies on Saturday, highs in the mid/upper 50s and winds out of the south at 10-15 mph. Mostly sunny skies on Sunday with temperatures slightly cooler in the low/mid 50s and winds out of the northwest at 5-15 mph.

Monday will be the calm before the storm as cloud coverage will build back in to become mostly cloudy with high temps in the mid 50s. Winds will be breezy out of the southeast at 10-20 mph with wind gusts ranging between 25-30 mph.

After some discrepancy over the last several days, guidance models are finally showing agreement when it comes to the upcoming winter weather system. There are still some slight differences when it comes to timing, coverage, and overall precipitation type, but we are starting to get a more cohesive idea of what to expect.

Here’s the rub: precipitation looks to start out in western Texoma counties during the late night hours on Monday and very early morning hours on Tuesday. By sunrise we will see a nearly-widespread coverage of precipitation. This precipitation will be a mix of rain, rain/snow mix, and snow all jumbled together. The reason for this messy mixture has to do with surface temperatures throughout the day. We will start out around the freezing mark, warming up into the low/mid 40s by Tuesday afternoon. For this reason, most of the precipitation we see during the daytime hours will be liquid or semi-frozen, but there will be instances of some light snow scattered throughout. The system will push out to the east starting Tuesday evening and clear fully out of Texoma just before sunrise on Wednesday. During the overnight hours of Tuesday into Wednesday, temperatures will cool below freezing, allowing for some of the last precipitation we see coming down as snowfall.

How this will eventually play out is likely to change over the coming days, so keep up to date with us over the weekend with new developments on this system. At this moment, forecasted accumulations for rainfall are anywhere between 0.50″ and 1.5″, and forecasted accumulations for snowfall are anywhere between 0.25″ and 1.0″ (with near-trace amounts for areas south of the Red River in North Texas).

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