Thu Oct 27 & Fri Oct 28 Outlook

Does snow mix in with rain at DEN tomorrow? And on Friday, will warm air nose far enough into the DFW area to promote severe thunderstorms?

Welcome to any new readers! And as a reminder to long-ish time readers, we’re testing a new format for these outlooks. To both old and new—we’re grateful you’re here.

If you have questions about the content of this outlook, the answers might be in this post (we keep adding to it). Otherwise, let us know if something doesn’t make sense (we welcome feedback of all kinds!).

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Thursday, October 27

We forecast TSA will screen 2.388 million travelers (± 0.5σ, or a prediction interval of about 38%, is 2.33-2.45 million travelers).

A cold front sinking south across the DEN area during Thursday morning will promote showers across the foothills and urban corridor. There’s some question as to whether areas east of I-25 (e.g. DEN) will be cold enough to support snow. For its part, the Short-Range Ensemble Forecast (SREF) keeps probabilities around 20% for the first half of the day; the forecast discussion carries “dusting to trace accumulations” language.

Friday, October 28

We forecast TSA will screen 2.441 million travelers (± 0.5σ, or a prediction interval of about 38%, is 2.38-2.50 million travelers).

Thunderstorms spread from West Texas into the DFW area during early Friday; warmer, moister air will, meanwhile, nose into the area from the southeast. Should this warm sector advance further north than forecast, the development of severe thunderstorms will warrant watching. Regardless, widespread rain looks to last into early Saturday. The closure of DFW’s 13R/31L may compound capacity pressures.

You can check out¹ hourly estimates in this workbook.

1. While it links to a Google Sheet, it’s an Excel file and relies on the XLOOKUP function, which does not exist in Sheets. You can download the file and open in Excel, which should resolve the #NAME? error; if any readers don’t have Excel, let us know and we can work on a solution.