North Texas Under Winter Storm Warning

The Metro area is under a WINTER STORM WARNING from 6pm Sunday night until 6pm Monday night. We are expecting 1/2" to 1" of sleet to accumulate in the warned areas:

The rest of north Texas is under a Winter Storm Watch during the same time frame, there will likely be less than an half of inch of sleet fall in these areas.

All this starts with a cold rain that quickly picks up in by mid-morning tomorrow. Temperatures will be in the lower 40's all morning but drop into the upper 30's by afternoon. It'll be windy, we could have some occasional thunder as well. The rain will start to taper off as we fall into nighttime.

Just as the rain leaves at the end of the day the really cold air starts to pour into north Texas. We could have wet roads north and northwest of the metro area freeze as temperatures drop. Roads in the metro area should be fine.

Overnight the next round comes in; this time it'll be all sleet mixed in with some light freezing rain and represent the worst winter weather we've had this season. There is enough instability where "Thundersleet" could occur so get your best Jim Contore live shot ready:

THIS ROUND WILL CREATE INSTANT ROAD PROBLEMS. Right now we are thinking it hits the metro area sometime between 1am and 4am.  It will quickly stick to bridges, roads and sidewalks. The heaviest amounts will be northwest of the Metro area from Mineral Wells over to Gainesville- more than an inch could accumulate. Around a half-inch could end up on the surface around the metro area:

Most of the sleet/light freezing rain will fall during the first hours of Monday morning. We could have some power lines drop, especially where the heaviest sleet falls. This appears to be much more sleet than freezing rain so I'm not expecting major power outages.

Temperatures will stay in the upper 20's all day. Light amounts of sleet and sometimes snow will continue afternoon all the way into early Tuesday morning.

Our southern counties could end up with more freezing rain than the metro area, most of it falling Monday mid-day and afternoon. This could create power outages.

We expect all this ice to still be around Tuesday morning; temperatures will drop into the low 20's. This won't be a "cobblestone ice" event like last Winter- that time we got three inches of sleet. There won't be much melting Monday afternoon so the ice won't get a chance to pile up and refreeze. There'll be some mounding of ice on the roads by Tuesday morning but not like before.

We'll warm up above freezing Tuesday afternoon and even get a little sunshine. This will help road conditions of course but temperatures will drop to the upper 20's by Wednesday morning so re-freezing will occur. The roads should clear completely by mid-day Wednesday.

As will all events like this a couple of degrees difference in the atmosphere above us could give us more freezing rain than sleet or more snow than sleet. We'll be updating this forecast over the next 24 hours.