{"id":132104,"date":"2026-01-21T16:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/132104\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T16:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T16:59:08","slug":"dfw-braces-for-potentially-catastrophic-winter-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/132104\/","title":{"rendered":"DFW braces for ‘potentially catastrophic’ winter storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures<\/a> in the nation\u2019s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.<\/p>\n

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a \u201cwidespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,\u201d said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how people are going to deal with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get a half of an inch of ice \u2014 or heaven forbid an inch of ice \u2014 that could be catastrophic,\u201d said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.<\/p>\n

The National Weather Service warned of “great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain\u201d starting Friday in much of the nation\u2019s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.<\/p>\n

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.<\/p>\n

The exact timing of the approaching storm \u2014 and where it is headed \u2014 remained uncertain. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.<\/p>\n

Meteorologists at WFAA say that while it’s hard to pinpoint an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth at this point, one thing’s for sure<\/a>: it’ll be extremely cold. So it’s good to start being weather aware.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what to know:<\/p>\n

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a ‘major winter storm\u2019
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,\u201d National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.<\/p>\n

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be \u201ca major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that\u2019s spilling in,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm\u2019s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, we\u2019re expecting rain to move into much of the state,\u201d Shamburger said.<\/p>\n

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.<\/p>\n

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a very difficult forecast,\u201d Shamburger said.<\/p>\n

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river<\/a> of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobal models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,\u201d according to the National Weather Service’s Atlanta office.<\/p>\n

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.<\/p>\n

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation\u2019s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is \u201cwill be the coldest yet,\u201d Jackson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,\u201d Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that\u2019s connected to the Arctic Ocean. \u201cAnd this is dominating the weather over all of North America.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation\u2019s northern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,172],"class_list":["post-132104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}