The winter weather has already caused major travel issues across west Texas. In Lubbock, there were more than 30 wrecks during the morning commute today due to icy roadways. Lubbock Police and the city shut down many flyovers and other sections of the loop, Marsha Sharp and I-27. This was just the beginning of the wintry weather. There is a winter weather advisory for the entire area until 7:00 pm CT Monday. At 7:00 pm CT, a winter storm warning will take over until 1:00 pm CT Wednesday. You can see in the picture above all the pink areas. Those counties have the winter storm warning. Just about all of west Texas. We're expecting the heavier winter precipitation late tonight, through the day tomorrow.
The two forecasts above are from different models for the time period of 1:00 am-7:00 am CT Tuesday. I am sure you can notice that these two images look pretty similar. When forecasters see different models looking the same, or in agreement, we have higher certainty that an event will occur. In the case of winter weather, we have higher certainty of the type of precipitation. The red color indicates freezing rain. Purple is a mix of freezing rain and sleet, with some snow flakes. The blue is all snow. Lubbock is looking to see a mix of freezing rain and sleet in the morning hours. Unfortunately this will be during the morning commute Tuesday. Roads, bridges and overpasses will be in worse shape than they were this morning. If you were caught in the traffic, or wrecked your car, imagine how bad it will be tomorrow. Remember to leave earlier, take an alternate route and drive slow!
The precipitation looks to continue into the afternoon and evening hours tomorrow. For Lubbock and areas north and west, temperatures will not make it to, or above the freezing mark. So the ice is going to linger all day long. You must not travel tomorrow unless you absolutely have to. That is imperative and I can not stress that enough. It will be icy for the entire KLBK viewing area. The eastern counties will see freezing rain mixed with some light snow flakes and sleet. The state line counties will see snow late tonight and tomorrow. Accumulations for Parmer, Bailey, Castro and Swisher Counties will get to 1-3", with locally higher amounts to near 4" by Tuesday night. Lubbock will not see snow accumulation with this storm.
You can click on the images above to see exact numbers, but just looking at these forecasts for temperatures, you can see that it will be very cold tomorrow. These are two different model forecasts for low temperatures on Tuesday. Lubbock will be dipping into the mid 20s by 7:00 am. Wind chill values will be in the teens and single digits area-wide. It will be a brutally cold day on Tuesday, with Lubbock's high expected to only reach 30°. The temperature is going to be a leading factor as to why road conditions will be so treacherous. This is the first winter blast of the season and we're not even to winter yet! You will need to bundle up through Wednesday and stay home at all costs. It's not worth travelling out if you don't have to and getting into a wreck, or breaking down. We will finally see highs start to climb up into the 50s by Thursday, but Lubbock's highs will be below average through the end of the weekend.
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