Crystal Ball Gazing & The Mars Volta

After a nice pre-season event last Friday, it appears that chase season will go back into hybernate mode for awhile. The latest extended model runs indicate that an east coast trough will establish itself starting later this week. With NW flow aloft this time of year, it spells cool, dry and stable weather for us. This should prevail for the next couple of weeks. There has been a pretty persistant forecast by the GFS of the upper air pattern transitioning again by around March 8-10 with the east coast trough scooting out and replaced by Western CONUS troughing. That is some true crystal ball forecasting of course by that time. Time will tell. In the meantime, enjoy some decent, relatively tranquil weather. I'll be breaking out the fishing gear. :-)

One interesting little event is shaping up for Wednesday. A decent little surface low rapidly develops near the TX PH as some diffleunce and divergence aloft spreads over the area on the nose of mid and upper level jets associated with the next upper level shortwave. However, all models indicate that Wednesday starts off with severely scoured moisture with SWerly surface to 700mb winds. There's just not enough time to pull the moisture back far enough into the TX Panhandle to make a difference.

With luck, something might fire in W OK or NW TX where the dryline tries to survive into late afternoon and where moisture will be adequate. But, it's also a classic situation of the dryline crawfishing rapidly westward and dissolving around peak heating. Of course, it will be something to watch as Wednesday approaches. But, I'm not excited about it at all. :-)

btw....for the music afficionados out there, I finally "discovered" a group called "The Mars Volta". I had listened to one of their songs back in 2002 and it didn't appeal to me. Recently, I've listened to several other songs and I'm now a major fan. :-) TheMarsVolta.com for their homepage. To listen to a few sample tracks, check out Amazon's site . I suggest the album "Amputechture" and tracks "Viscera Eyes" and "Meccamputechture". Off their album "Frances The Mute", the track "L'Via L'Viaquez" will complete a nice sampling.