The Monday Texas weather round-up featuring some very wet weather north into the Ohio Valley

In brief: Despite the blizzard and cold weather in the Northeast lately, it’s been mostly warm across the country, with some serious warmth this week as well. A much more active pattern will establish over the middle of the country, including in Texas where heavy rain and severe weather are possible later this week.

Happy Monday, folks. We are now in the throes of meteorological spring. Why the difference between meteorological spring (Mar 1-May 31) and astronomical spring (Mar 20-Jun 21)? Convenience, mostly. And consistency. Astronomical seasons don’t always follow the same dates each year, though they’re fairly close, as they’re tied to the Earth’s tilt and the alignment of the sun over the Equator. So when you hear meteorologists talk about spring, we’re talking about the months of March, April, and May.

And to that end, it has felt like deep spring across much of the country. Over the last week, over 2,000 warm temperature records (max and min) have been set compared to 275 cold records. Over the next 7 days, we have additional record warmth expected, perhaps peaking this Friday where dozens of warm temperature records may be set from the Great Lakes into the South.

Record warmth will be common this week, peaking on Friday in the Lakes, Midwest, Ohio Valley, and South. (NOAA)

Most of the record highs are forecast pretty close to the current records for the date. Some of the record warm lows are already well above their records right now. For example, Binghamton, NY is forecast to be 45 degrees on Saturday morning compared to the record warm low of 39 degrees set in 1974. Detroit is forecast to be 51 on Saturday, compared to the record of 47 set in 2012. It takes a lot to forecast record temperatures that far in advance, but it’s going to be that sort of warm period this week. The only cool part of the country right now looks to be New England, and even that will disappear by midweek.

With warm air is going to come precipitation, and the potential exists for a healthy amount of it from Texas (more below) into the Mid-Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley. Current rainfall forecasts over the next 7 days are anywhere from 2 to 5 inches across the region.

Rainfall over the next week is expected to exceed 3-4 inches from North Texas into Arkansas with locally higher amounts possible from Texas into the Ohio Valley. (Pivotal Weather)

In addition, there will be some severe weather possible in the Central U.S., with a couple of days highlighted between North Texas and Missouri.

A slight risk (2/5) is posted for Wednesday between the DFW Metroplex and the Missouri/Arkansas border. (NOAA SPC)

It appears that this active weather pattern is likely to persist beyond this week into next week as well, so prepare to start hearing about at least the risk of flooding eventually.

Texas weather this week

Focusing in on Texas, we know two things about this week: It will be a pattern change to stormy and will continue to be quite warm. Beyond that, we still have some questions to answer

Rainfall/Storms

First, over the course of the week, it will become increasingly stormy over parts of the state. Beginning Tuesday night, we could start to see a couple thunderstorms develop in the Panhandle and north-central plains of the state. Into Wednesday afternoon and evening, the chances of storms spread to the east, and parts of North Texas and East Texas are highlighted in severe weather risk for Wednesday.

Severe weather risk ranges from marginal (1/5) to slight (2/5) from parts of Hill Country through DFW to the Red River on Wednesday. (NOAA SPC)

This includes the Metroplex. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a couple stronger storms just outside this highlighted area too, down into Hill Country. Additional rounds of storms should follow Thursday, with a focus drifting back into West Texas. Strong to severe storms may attempt to develop again on Friday in Central Texas up into North Texas.

Severe weather risks shifts west on Thursday, then back to North Texas on Friday. (NOAA SPC)

More numerous showers and thunderstorms may affect the area from the Permian Basin into northeast Texas on Saturday. Active weather should continue in much of the state after this, perhaps with the exception of El Paso and the Panhandle.

All told, total rainfall is going to vary widely across the state. Most areas outside of El Paso and the Big Bend and Panhandle should see at least a half-inch of rain. Areas from about Laredo and Del Rio northward into San Antonio, Austin, Waco, and Dallas should see at least 1 to 2 inches of rain. I would expect at least an inch on either side of that in Hill Country, the Piney Woods, and College Station through Victoria. Embedded within those areas of rain will be isolated higher amounts. Some places could easily see 5 or 6 inches of rain or even more before all is said done. Consider the map below an average for what to expect across the state.

The average total rainfall should be highest in North Texas and northeast Texas, but there will almost certainly be isolated areas in Hill Country or the Valley that see higher amounts. (Pivotal Weather)

Currently, most of Texas is not highlighted in any WPC risks for flooding. That being said, we’ll almost certainly see a few areas of flash flooding pop up. There will be a healthy amount of atmospheric moisture available in the state from Wednesday through the weekend, so these storms should have little trouble tapping into the heavy rain potential if they align themselves appropriately. The state has been so dry lately though that most of this rain will be beneficial.

Temperatures

It’ll be quite the warm week across Texas, with highs expected to be in the mid-80s in Houston, low to mid-80s in Dallas, and mid to upper 80s in San Antonio and Austin. Temperatures will be a little bouncier in West Texas, with Wednesday and especially Saturday looking cooler.

Austin forecast temperatures this week look more like mid-May than early March. (Weather Bell)

Last week’s hottest temperatures in the major Texas triangle cities were 86° on Friday in Houston, 84° in Dallas on Saturday, and 88° in Austin on Wednesday and Saturday. San Antonio wins the prize for first triangle city to 90 degrees, hitting 95° on Thursday. This was the 5th hottest temperature observed in winter in San Antonio going back to 1886.

One of the hottest winter days on record occurred in San Antonio last week. (NOAA/ACIS)

Corpus Christi’s 95 degrees on Thursday was their third hottest winter day on record. Laredo’s 103° was the hottest winter temperature on record there, tying the mark hit in 2011 and 1986. A preliminary all-time U.S. hot record for winter was set on Thursday at Falcon Dam in the Valley at 106°. The data is preliminary and has to be vetted for accuracy before we can officially put in the books.

The hope is that some of this rain will reach drought-stricken parts of the state. South Texas needs it desperately.

Recapping the mammoth Blizzard of 2026 and looking at how snowfall and model output varied

In brief: Today starts with a lot of statistics recapping the blizzard. We then jump into a more nuanced narrative showing how these types of storms unevenly distribute snowfall. After, model performance in the 1-2 days ahead of the storm is assessed, and the results are fascinating.

Blizzard recap

The blizzard that raked the Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic will go into the history books as a first-ballot hall of fame storm. For southeastern New England, this storm rewrote the records. Prior to yesterday, Providence, Rhode Island’s biggest snowstorm came in the Blizzard of ’78 (which if you recall we mentioned before this storm). In that one, they received 28.6 inches of snow. Going forward, the bar has been raised 9 inches higher. Providence finished with 37.9 inches of snow yesterday, a single day and storm record going back into the early 1900s. Incredible. They weren’t alone.

(NWS WPC)

The 37.9 inch total in Warwick (TF Green Airport, Providence’s official obs site) is a preliminary state record for Rhode Island. The current record is 30 inches in Woonsocket from the Blizzard of ’78. Before a state record is certified, it needs to undergo a pretty rigorous investigation on how measurements were obtained, quality of siting, quality of measurement, timing, location, etc. The last certified state record snowfall occurred in 2013 in Connecticut, when Ansonia had 36 inches. A more recent candidate from Milton, Florida’s 9.8″ in January 2025 has not yet been certified to my knowledge.

I figure it’s as good a time as any to take a second and look at the all-time record snowfalls in the Northeast Corridor.

Richmond’s record has been established since 1940. Washington’s biggest storm remains the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922. Baltimore established their record in 2016’s “Snowzilla” storm. Wilmington, DE set their record in 2010’s Snowmageddon. Philly through Newark remains Blizzard of ’96 territory. Central Park also set their record in 2016. Bridgeport, CT won their record in the 2013 storm The Weather Channel dubbed “Nemo.” Hartford’s record was established in January 2011. Providence has a new benchmark, and Boston set theirs in Presidents’ Day II in 2003. Interestingly, every major city north of DC had their record established in the last 30 years (one notable exception is Albany, which is still led by the Blizzard of ’88…1888).

Snow disparities and model performance

We often think about nor’easters and East Coast storms as monoliths. The big storms were the Blizzard of ’96, the Presidents’ Day blizzard of ’78, Snowmageddon, the March 1993 Superstorm, etc. But as our technology has improved to be able to analyze these systems, we’ve learned so much more about how complicated they are. We’ve always known storm track was important; that much is obvious. But in the last 20 years, we’ve really latched on to understanding how banding and gradients, these finer-scale features within nor’easters can really amplify snow totals in some spots. You can see that in this storm too.

Click to enlarge the image above comparing radar precipitation estimates to snow totals. (NOAA/NSSL/NWS)

In the maps above, which you can enlarge by clicking on the image, I compared a few areas of relatively higher snow totals compared to areas around them. That’s the map on the left. It’s imperfect because reports are not evenly or equitably distributed or entirely finalized, but there is enough there to give you the general picture. To the right is the radar estimated precipitation. I narrowed the scale to exaggerate the differences and to try and tease out some relatively higher values. If you look at the overlap between the higher totals we saw in southeast New England, Long Island, the NYC Metro, and between Trenton and Philly, those do correspond to higher radar estimates as well. The location and “noise” from the Doppler sites makes this a little more challenging, but there’s enough “there” there. Those areas were more likely to trip 2.25 inches of radar estimates than in other areas. Delaware could also be included here I think as well, and the radar totals there are much higher due to warmer temps and some mixing.

So within the storm, these mesoscale banding features establish and sometimes pivot, and you get these corridors of amplified snow totals, not a monolithic slew of snowfall. You can see that in 1996 as well, though with somewhat less clarity than you can see today.

(NOAA CPC)

You can see the terrain effects in Maryland and the Virginias, as well as where the “megaband” setup along the Northeast Corridor between Philly and Morristown.

So with all this nuance, how did the models perform this go around? It’s tough to say who “won” per se, but clearly this was a general GFS victory, as it sniffed it out and kept it held even as the Euro got wishy washy. But, let’s focus on precipitation totals. Here were the global model forecasts from Friday morning’s model runs.

24 hour precipitation from 18z Sunday through 18z Monday for (clockwise from top left) the GFS, Euro, AIGFS and Euro AIFS. (Tropical Tidbits)

I had to take 24 hour precipitation in this case because there was consequential precipitation Friday that would have polluted this map. But you can see that the GFS, although somewhat overdone in terms of total liquid did correctly pick up on the relatively higher totals we saw in Delaware, Long Island, and southeast New England. The Euro was much too dry. Their AI counterparts did similarly, though in the Euro’s case, it looks like the AI model somewhat outperformed the physics-based model. Again, here was the total precip in that same 18z-18z 24-hour period.

Total liquid precipitation estimates from the Blizzard of 2026. (NOAA NSSL)

If we look at how some of the shorter-range models (NAM, HRRR) did on Saturday morning/afternoon, as well as the Euro, in a time you’d expect to have the storm nailed down, we see some interesting things.


24 hour precipitation from 18z Sunday through 18z Monday for (clockwise from top left) the hi-res NAM, classic NAM, Euro operational, and HRRR. (Tropical Tidbits, NOAA)

First, I had to struggle to find an adequate HRRR image, so I settled on the one from NOAA. Secondly, let’s assess this. The NAM’s hi-res 3km version? Not terrible. It highlighted southeast New England, Long Island, and the heavier stuff near Delaware. The classic NAM? A little overdone in Jersey. Recall, we saw the peak totals showing up ahead of the storm in Ocean and Monmouth Counties in NJ. In reality, those locations did about as well as the whole corridor from there into New York City and Long Island. But overall, it did okay. The HRRR is a little tougher to lean into with poor granularity, but generally speaking it handled itself ok, though it slightly overdid the 2-inch totals. It nicely highlights Rhode Island relative to the rest of New England though. And the Euro continued to struggle here.

It will be interesting to see why the Euro floundered with this event so much more than some other modeling. Even with a 6-hour lead time on Sunday it still dropped the ball on precip totals and was outdone by the GFS in most cases and even by its own AIFS model. On that last point, it is encouraging to see the AI modeling handle a storm like this fairly well.

The same 24-hour precipitation forecast as the ones above except from last Tuesday from the European AIFS model. (Tropical Tidbits)

You can see that the signal was quite robust on the AIFS with that Tuesday morning run. Now, to be fair, it did lose it that night and did not really fully recover til Friday, though it showed correct trends in the runs between. Still, it stabilized faster than the Euro operational. I’m not going to call this one a “win” for AI modeling, but it was an encouraging overall performance that shows where it has strengths and value when used in conjunction with other model output, even at short lead times. Had you noticed this, noticed the Euro wavering, and noticed the consistency in the NAM modeling, any questions of uncertainty would have been allayed somewhat on Saturday. Easier said than done however, and Northeast snowstorms remain one of forecast meteorology’s most difficult challenges.

Someone will end up at 30 inches from the Blizzard, as we look at the rest of the upcoming week’s weather

In brief: Today we take a look at the stats from the East Coast blizzard so far. We also introduce a hopefully new weekly feature that outlooks Texas-wide weather. And a look at how at an atmospheric river event will evolve into our next Eastern U.S. storm this week.

Blizzard update

The East Coast blizzard will exit today, but as of this morning, we’ve got numerous reports.

Reported snowfall from observers across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic as of mid-morning Monday. (NOAA NWS)

The highest reported snow total so far comes from Brookhaven on Long Island, which has reported 26 inches. That total is also now being reported near Richmond, RI, Narragansett, RI, and Quogue on Long Island on the south shore just east of Brookhaven. It is still snowing in all these locations. Some other notable totals in 24.2 inches in Freehold, NJ, 24 inches near New Bedford, MA, 19.3 inches in Bethel, DE, and 22 inches in Langhorne, PA and Chester, CT.

Officially, Central Park is at 15.1 inches so far, putting this storm in 19th place for New York City back to 1869. The 14.5 inches at Atlantic City Airport so far means the storm cracks the top 10 list there back to 1945. Just for the record, I would like to point out that the Atlantic City area saw a total of 4 top 20 storms in the 18 years I spent growing up there. Since I left, they’ve now had 9 of them.

You’re welcome.

More to come on the snow, but what about the wind? We have seen several gusts up over 65 mph. Atlantic City hit 60 mph, Barnegat Light 70 mph, and Stony Brook and Nantucket both hit basically hurricane equivalent at 74 mph. Marthas Vineyard hit 71 mph.

Recorded maximum wind gusts of 60 mph or stronger so far. (NOAA)

Obviously, these kind of winds are knocking out power. As of this writing over 250,000 customers in Massachusetts are without power, 130,000 in New Jersey, and 76,000 in Delaware. In total, we’re around 600,000 customers from Virginia into New England without power right now. We’ve had worse storms to be sure in that regard. But obviously, this is quite a powerful storm.

One area where the storm has tended to underperform was with tidal flooding. Most tide gauges that were predicted to approach major flooding came nowhere near it overnight, so some good news there, although there is certainly some coastal flooding and beach erosion ongoing with this storm.

More to come on the final totals!

Texas weather this week

Trying something new this week. Texas is big, and as a part of Space City Weather, we’re often asked about weather elsewhere in Texas. Well, I’m going to try to commit to a Monday 50,000 foot overview of what to watch for in Texas and generally the southern Plains and Louisiana for the upcoming week, as a number of our readers hail from there.

“No Rain,” by Blind Melon

First off, the weather word for Texas is dry. Most of the state should be absent any rain at all this week, with a midweek storm cranking up well off to the east. This will mean periodic fire danger, particularly as winds kick up through the week. Conditions may be at their most considerable on Tuesday, particularly in West Texas.

Fire Weather Watches are posted across the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico for Tuesday. (NWS Lubbock)

Red flag warnings are likely tomorrow. Winds don’t look insanely strong, but given the dryness and relatively low humidity, it will be enough to create meaningful fire weather conditions.

Meanwhile, the biggest question may be if one of the Texas triangle cities (Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston) can hit 90 degrees first and if so, who might it be? The leader in the clubhouse right now is Austin (Bergstrom) which hit 89 degrees on January 2nd. Forecast highs this week are expected to top off in the mid 80s in most of the larger cities. Corpus Christi has a shot to do so on Thursday, and much of the Rio Grande Valley will hit 90+ on Wednesday.

Most of the Valley will hit 90 degrees on Wednesday, but the chances of 90 are non-zero into parts of Hill Country as well. (NOAA GSL)

But the main story will continue to be the dryness across the state.

Storminess

It will be a moderately active week across the country in terms of storminess. A pretty healthy atmospheric river event is bearing down on the Northwest early this week, tipping AR4 on the 5-level scale for portions of southern Oregon and northern California.

The atmospheric river intensity will be a 3 to 4 on the 5-level scale into tomorrow on the Oregon/California border. (CW3E)

Rain totals are expected to be on the order of 1 to 3 inches from Tacoma south through Redding, CA. This will be a warm AR event, with snow levels up above 6,000 feet even into Oregon. Although the risk of severe flooding is not high with this event, there are numerous flood watches up across the West and a slight risk (2/4) for excessive rainfall on Tuesday in parts of the northern Sierra.

5-day rain totals show the peak in the West and the Southeast later in the week. (Pivotal Weather)

Meanwhile, the tail end of that storm is going to become the next Eastern U.S. storm by later in the week. Right now, it appears this will primarily be a locally heavy rainmaker in the Southeast, but there has been some back and forth in model guidance as to whether or not the storm could carry a wintry component on the northern fringe. This was aiming along I-90 on Sunday morning, but model guidance has mostly lost it at this point. Some of that uncertainty is likely due to the typical issues in predicting exact trajectories and intensities of West Coast storm systems. This tends to happen at times, and it’s one reason why we don’t usually get super excited more than 3 days out ahead of a winter event.

Still, as we saw with the East Coast blizzard, this can change quickly, so we’ve got another 36 hours or so before we can feel particularly confident one way or another on the future outcome here. Stay tuned.

East Coast blizzard about to get underway: Some last minute final forecast updates

In brief: The massive winter storm that will bear down on much of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic is about to kick off, so this post just runs through the expectations at the final hour.

Hopefully you all were able to watch Team USA take the gold this morning, and if you love cold and winter, the day should only get better for you in the Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Here, we’ll walk you through the various expectations now that we’re in the final moments before the storm really begins.

Snow totals

This should not be a major storm in the DC Metro, though a few inches are possible.

Snowfall forecast across Virginia and Maryland and Delaware (NWS Baltimore-Washington/Sterling, VA)

Snow totals begin to ramp as you approach the northwest and east side of the Chesapeake Bay. Around a half-foot is expected in Baltimore with higher totals to the east, rapidly escalating to 12 to 18 inches from Salisbury, MD north across all of Delaware. A period of mixing near the coast may hold totals down there a bit, particularly around Ocean City, MD.

Snowfall for Delaware and South Jersey. (NWS Mount Holly)

Snow totals really crank once into New Jersey with 12 to 24 inches likely in all of South Jersey. The riskiest spots for lower totals may be in Cape May County up to about Atlantic City and for the Delaware Beaches where a period of sleet or rain may mix in with the snow for a time, cutting totals down a little. There will still be a *lot* of snow.

Snow totals for eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. (NWS Mount Holly)

The gold medal winners for this snowstorm will probably be somewhere in Ocean or Monmouth Counties in New Jersey or just southwest of there, where we could, theoretically, see someone pick up nearly 25 inches of snow. We’ve seen some models put out 30-inch totals here, but I do think snow ratios may hinder that effort a bit. Likely someone between Salem County and Monmouth County will pick up 25 inches or more when all is said and done and be crowned champion. Elsewhere, 12 to 20 inches of snow is likely across most of the rest of New Jersey.

Snow totals in the NYC Metro area. (NWS New York City)

Around 20 inches of snow is expected for most of the New York City Metro with closer to 12 to 18 inches up into Connecticut and perhaps higher totals on Long Island. To make the top 10 list all-time for snowstorms in New York City, we’ll need to see at least 18.2 inches at Central Park. We need 14.1 inches for the top 20 list.

Total snowfall forecast for the Boston area and southern New England. (NWS Boston)

Snow totals will remain around 20 inches in southeast New England, with both Providence and Boston likely to come close to there. Lesser amounts will fall on Cape Cod and especially Nantucket. A secondary snowfall maximum for the event overall could occur between Providence and Boston.

A regional snapshot of total forecast snowfall. (Pivotal Weather)

That’s a lot of snow. This storm will be in a future edition of “Northeast Snowstorms” I am sure.

Powerful winds

The forecast wind gusts remain very impressive across the region, with coastal communities likely to see 50 to 70 mph wind gusts from New Jersey through Long Island and southeast New England.

Widespread 50 to 70 mph gusts on the coast and 40 to 50 mph gusts inland are likely with this storm through tomorrow. (Pivotal Weather)

Hence, blizzard warnings are spread over a wide area for most areas south and east of I-84.

Coastal flooding

Tonight’s high tide is expected to cause locally major coastal flooding on the Delaware coast and Jersey Shore up through Long Island. Atlantic City is now forecast to see major tidal flooding levels reached. An 8-foot high tide would be the highest there since Hurricane Sandy.

Major tidal flooding is expected to be tested at Atlantic City tonight. (NOAA)

Widespread moderate tidal flooding will occur outside of those pockets of major flooding. Thankfully, the storm is moving away by tomorrow, so that should limit the number of elevated high tides we see, with mainly just tonight’s being the most troubling for the region.

And so now we wait and see the totals pile in. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe through this event in the East. Feel free to share your reports with us too!