Day 1 of 2021-22 Individual Tournament City: Wichita Falls, TX (KSPS)

Updated April 4, 2022 22:30 UTC

 

Today, the WxChallenge individual tournament begins for 4 weeks for Wichita Falls, TX (KSPS). This week is the wild card round; the top 32 in cumulative score automatically bypass this round, while the next 40 participants in each category who are not in the top 32 participate in the wild card round. The top 8 of this week's scores of each category will represent their categories in the tournament and move to the next round. Those who are not in the tournament or have been eliminated can still forecast as a bonus city. More info

About Wichita Falls, TX (KSPS):

• It is located in a rather rural area 8 km (5 mi) north of the small city of Wichita Falls in the very gently sloping Southern Plains region (higher to the west and lower to the east). The Rocky Mountains are well off to the west. This means that there is nothing stopping Arctic air masses coming from the north, warm and moist air masses from the Gulf of Mexico, and dry and often hot air masses from the west, enhanced by the downsloping off the Rocky Mountains. It also means that strong winds are common, but the rural location means that rapid radiational cooling occurs with clear skies and light winds.
• Its position in the interior of the North American continent, lack of surrounding bodies of water, and the lack of topography leads to often drastic day-to-day temperature fluctuations. It also makes the area often dry with large diurnal temperature swings, but it is also prone to strong severe thunderstorms and tornadoes in the spring, as hot, dry air from the west meets and goes over warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico along the dry line.
• Elevation: 1014 ft (309 m), Sunrise: 6:45-7:15 AM CDT (1145-1215 UTC), Sunset: 7:55-8:15 PM CDT (0055-0115 UTC)
• Live webcam 5 miles to the south
  

Day 1

Thunderstorms with heavy rain close to a stationary front are currently tracking through the Wichita Falls area, though they are sub-severe at this point. 

Source: RadarScope

Source: PivotalWeather

The storms have cooled and moistened the low-levels. The storms will clear tonight with drying above 900 hPa, but lingering low-level moisture trapped beneath will lead to low clouds and even fog limiting radiational cooling tonight despite calm winds. There is considerable model disagreement on low temperatures, perhaps due to the disagreements on how thick the low-level clouds will be and given that conditions are otherwise ideal for radiational cooling.

After daytime heating burn the low clouds off tomorrow morning, it will be dry and sunny for the whole week due to a westerly component to the low-level flow. However, temperatures will still vary considerably. South to southwesterly wind will strengthen during the day on Tuesday and shifting to more west-southwest, bringing hot, dry air from West Texas. The high will likely occur late after the shift to west-southwest winds occurs. A cold front arriving Tuesday night will lead to a burst of very strong winds (switching to northerly to northwesterly) and cooler temperatures. This will lead to a tricky wind forecast, as the front and associated burst of strong wind will likely arrive close to Wednesday 06z, making it a little uncertain if the wind will come in time for day 1. Some models show the front passing just before 06z while some show it passing just after 06z. Given models' tendency for sharp cold fronts to be too slow in the Plains, it appears more likely that the front will pass before 06z. 

Source: PivotalWeather

 

Also, check out the output of a machine learning model developed by University of Washington former graduate student Jon Weyn: MOS-X