North Texas is Going to Get a Snowstorm

NCAA Football Playoff Game is Friday evening in Arlington

North Texas is going to get a snowstorm. Currently 2-6” of snow is expected to fall across the Dallas/Fort Worth Area from Thursday into Thursday night.

The picture above from NOAA shows snow falling in Dallas during the big Texas cold outbreak of February 11-20, 2021.

Every single county in Texas was placed under a Winter Storm Warning in Feb. 2021! In addition a Wind Chill Warning, and a Hard Freeze Warning were issued for the entire state.

Power outages occurred throughout the South, but they were most concentrated in Texas. At the peak of the Arctic blast, nearly 10 million people were in the dark, without the ability to heat their homes or cook food. The freeze also caused water pipes to burst and boil water advisories were issued in many counties.

Here’s another pic. from NOAA of the snow in Dallas in Feb. 2021. There were numerous accidents and slide-offs throughout the state, including a pile-up of over 100 vehicles on I-35 West in Fort Worth, leaving several fatalities in its wake.

The Great Texas Freeze of February 2021 caused a billion dollars’ worth of damages, state-wide blackouts and more than 200 fatalities.

Here’s a look at the upper level pattern during a more typical, stable polar vortex and during a disrupted polar vortex, which can allow Arctic air to dive south into Texas and even down to northern Mexico.

Here’s a timeline of the snow for Texas this week. Snow begins west of Dallas and Waco Wednesday night an overspreads much of north Texas and the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex on Thursday. The snow continues Thursday night, exiting the area early Friday. Southeast of the Dallas area, a mix of precipitation is expected, including freezing rain.

Much of North Texas is expected to see 2-5” of snow, with the possibility of a narrow strip of 5-8” of snow.

Dallas averages 1.5” of snow per winter. The most they have ever had in a winter is 17.6” in the winter of 1977-78. The last time Dallas got 2” of snow in January was in 1985 - 40 years ago!

Now, Friday night, the NCAAF football playoff game is being played at A T & T stadium in nearby Arlington, Texas (it used to be played at the Cotton Bowl stadium on the Texas State Fairgrounds. Ohio State is taking on Texas (it’s kind of a home game for the Longhorns). The snow should have moved east by then and the game is a domed stadium, but people still have to get to the stadium and Dallas is not known to have a large fleet of snow plows and sand trucks. Looks like many of the kids in North Texas will get a “snow day” on Friday.

Here’s a record of monthly snowfall at DFW airport over the last 25 years.

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