Look for cloudier skies out there as we get our Friday going on a cool note. The forecast calls for some partial sunshine this afternoon along with high temperatures mostly in the low 70s, which is again notably cooler-than-norm for this time of year.
Southeast winds come back and get gusty at times today, with sustained winds up around 15 mph. As the moisture pumps in from the Gulf, we're also watching a flow from the Pacific move across Mexico towards West Texas, and that's where the first storms of this event are rolling in from. Radar shows some activity dying out near the Rio Grande.
Computer models typically have a hard time with weather rolling in directly from Mexico, where we get very little upper-air and radar data, so this certainly deserves watching as another similar round of storms could fire up tonight then move towards I-35 first thing in the morning.
We're going with a 30% chance for showers overnight, then a 50% rain/storm chance during the day tomorrow. Futurecast shows the West Texas dryline trying to push from the Hill Country to Austin area around 4 p.m. tomorrow, and it could be the starting point of a few brief storms. Then the cold front itself (a weak one, at that) is expected to follow, currently timed to cross the Capital City area around midnight with what could be another brief round of rain and thunder.
At the worst of it, the dynamics favor some sizable hail in the strongest storm cells. A MARGINAL risk zone for severe storms extends from the Red River south to I-10 and as far west as I-35.
Overall rain accumulations are now projected to be much less than we had once thought. Our in-house model calls for less than 1/10th of an inch for most areas. Where storms move through, it could be much heavier -- and that's more likely northeast of the CapCity. NOAA's 3 day rain outlook says we might have anywhere between 1/4" to 1/2" in our local region.
Check in with us on 'Weather on the 1s' on TV and/or the live stream for updates as we watch this storm system move through.