As indicated in our blogs yesterday, this morning certainly did end up being eventful in parts of Southeast Texas. We likely had several brief tornadoes occur. The National Weather Service in Houston will be out this afternoon conducting damage surveys. They’ll determine how many tornadoes occurred. So far I haven’t heard of any overly-severe damage, but there has been structure damage and lots of trees downed.

The line of thunderstorms responsible for the severe weather in the Houston metro this morning is now moving into extreme Southeast Texas. There remains the possibility of severe weather in the form of damaging wind gusts and isolated tornadoes. Wind shear values remain strong, but the linear mode should keep the tornado threat limited to brief spinups. Of-course we’ll have to watch for any isolated storms out ahead of the line over the next hour or two. The strongest segments of the squall line may produce damaging wind gusts over 60 MPH and brief tornadoes. The intensity of the line has decreased over the last hour, but we’ll watch it until it moves east of Texas. Light to moderate rain will continue behind the squall line for about two hours.

Back in the Texas Panhandle we have light to locally moderate snow falling as moisture wraps around on the back edge of our upper level low. We have a winter weather advisory in place for the southern Texas Panhandle through the afternoon hours. Accumulations up to two inches may occur in a few spots, but most locations will generally receive a dusting to one inch. Watch for icy spots on elevated surfaces and slush on the primary roads.

The precipitation in the Texas Panhandle will move east into Northwest texas, Texoma, North Texas, and Northeast Texas later this afternoon. It’ll be all rain, although I can’t rule out a few snow flakes mixing in. Additional precipitation totals will be light with another tenth to two tenths of an inch possible. Finally, we’ll see precipitation end this evening as the upper level storm system moves east of Texas.