13 November 2012
High clouds have been drifting in from the west today and they are expected to remain with us through the evening and overnight. They are the product of blow-off cirrus tops associated with a large upper-air disturbance traveling west-to-east over southern Texas and headed into the western Gulf.
Those high clouds thickened enough to filter Tuesday's afternoon sunshine, and that kept many WAFB neighborhoods in the 50°s for Tuesday’s highs. In fact, Tuesday’s high of 60° is the “lowest” afternoon max-temp recorded at BR’s Metro Airport since February 19th!
WAFB communities won’t get anything more than those high-and-thin ice-clouds (cirrus clouds) from the Texas disturbance, and we expect most of those clouds to clear out during the first half of Wednesday, leaving us with fair skies for Wednesday afternoon. But we’re still another day away from the real start of the warming trend expected, so highs on Wednesday will once again top-out in the low 60°s for many WAFB neighborhoods.
By Thursday, the northern branch of the jet stream will have retreated a little farther to the north, taking the truly cold air with it, while a developing ridge in the southern branch of the jet stream (currently over the SW U.S. and NW Mexico) shifts east and provides a mechanism to enhance the slow warming for the central Gulf Coast later this week. That same southern jet stream ridge will also assure dry weather for the rest of the week and through the weekend, with highs climbing to, or even above, 70° for many WAFB communities over the weekend.
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