A stormy evening will give way to blustery, wet, and colder conditions on Friday

DEEP EAST TEXAS (KTRE) - A First Alert Weather Day is in place for deep east Texas tonight as a line of strong-to-severe thunderstorms sets its sights on the Piney Woods in the late evening, early overnight hours.

The leading edge of this large cluster of thunderstorms will start to move into Crockett, Grapeland, Alto, and Mount Enterprise by ten o’clock, then pushing through Nacogdoches, Lufkin, Corrigan, Center, and San Augustine near the midnight hour. That gust front will then push through Woodville, Jasper, Burkeville, and Newton in the two o’clock hour on Friday morning, right in the middle of the overnight hours.

With a low-end threat for severe weather tonight, damaging winds are the main threat, with a lesser threat for large hail and isolated tornadoes.

In addition to the severe potential, locally heavy rainfall will also accompany this frontal passage.

Rainfall amounts look to average around one-to-two inches, with isolated, higher amounts possible given the ample moisture this cold front will have to work with.

The cold front blowing into the Piney Woods for St. Patrick’s Day this Friday will have some cold air associated with it. There will be some lingering clouds and a few showers in the morning before the rain chances dwindle by Friday afternoon. The bigger story, though, will be the blustery north winds and chilly temperatures invading the state to close out the week. Highs will be in the lower 50′s on St. Patrick’s Day under those cloudy skies and brisk northerly winds.

This will set the stage for an unseasonably chilly weekend in which we will have wake-up temperatures in the middle 30′s with highs only reaching the middle 50′s. These cold mornings may also come with some patchy frost.

If you have done some spring planting, you may want to protect the tender vegetation that may be sensitive to the cold since some patchy frost may be possible this weekend in the late night, early morning hours.

After a dry weekend under mostly cloudy skies, the gradual return of an onshore flow will lead to moderating temperatures and low-end rain chances returning for the middle of next week.

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