San Antonio is no stranger to a later-winter storm, and odds are quickly rising that this impending arctic blast sweeping the U.S. is going to deal another heavy blow to highways as January nears its end. The National Weather Service is warning the Alamo City now has much higher odds of seeing freezing rain as winter storm impact maps push further and further south as the cold front nears.
While the odds of freezing rain and ice were pretty low in San Antonio until the latest update Wednesday afternoon, there’s growing confidence the city will see freezing rain and some form of ice accumulation, particularly on raised highways and bridges, just as the spurs tees off on Saturday night.
“Bexar County is not included [in the Winter Storm Watch]. We want to wait one more day for counties further south of the current watch,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Jason Runeyn, with the San Antonio-Austin office, said Wednesday afternoon. “It remains a potential that we could have to expand the winter weather watch further south of where it’s at or just go with a lesser severity product called our winter weather advisory.”
San Antonio is already under an extreme cold watch as temperatures are set to dip into the low 20s Saturday night and wind chills plummet as low as single digits or zero. But freezing rain chances are climbing as precipitation odds climb into the 80% range Friday and lingering in the 60-80% range Saturday evening just as freezing temperatures settle in…