Strong to severe thunderstorms could graze the northwestern edge of the ArkLaTex Monday night. Tuesday stays warm with a few more storms possible. Colder air returns Wednesday with the threat of rain through Saturday.
A chance of strong to severe storms: Clouds returned to the ArkLaTex Sunday and Sunday night with some showers developing. Warm and moist air will continue to invade the area ahead of an approaching cold front. Thunderstorms will likely develop to the west of the ArkLaTex late Monday over southern Oklahoma and northwest Texas. These storms will track to the northeast. Most models including Futurecast show this activity staying to the north and northwest of our area. We will have to keep an eye on the northern edge of the ArkLaTex Monday night as there is still a chance they could take a more southerly course. Once this activity moves out, we could see new storms develop late Monday night into Tuesday morning over the northwest edge of our area. There is a very small chance that these could become severe.
SPC Outlook: The image below shows the latest outlooks from the Storm Prediction Center. They indicate that we do have a ‘slight’ severe weather risk in the ArkLaTex north of I-30, especially over McCurtain county. IF we do see any severe weather in our area Monday night, all threats will be possible including damaging wind, large hail, and a tornado or two. Again, as of right now, it appears that the biggest risk for severe weather will be north and northwest of our area. The severe weather risk could linger into Tuesday, but the risk Tuesday will likely be highest to the east of our area. Cooler air will move back into the area Tuesday night. This will end our severe weather worries for the rest of the week.
Rainfall potential: Models have dramatically decreased their rainfall projections for the upcoming week. While it still appears likely that one to two inches will be possible over the northern edge of the area, most of the ArkLaTex will see rainfall totals of less than one inch from now through Saturday.
Any wintry weather? A couple of times this winter we have seen the Ouacitas to the north of the ArkLaTex protect our region from wintry precipitation. It appears that this will be the case for most of the area again this week. If we are going to have any wintry weather issues, they will likely be over the north and northwest edges of the area late Thursday and Thursday night. As always, forecast winter precipitation is very tricky and we will have to keep an eye on this as we move through the week.
Parade Weather/next week: There will be lots of Mardi Gras festivities going on this weekend. It now appears that we could have some scattered showers around for the Krewe of Gemini parade Saturday. Temperatures for the parade will be quite chilly in the 40s. We are still several days from the weekend so fingers crossed that this changes. We will likely see some sunshine return starting Sunday with warmer temperatures. The dry and warmer weather should stick around through most of next week.
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