Forecast for the week of October 5th, ACL weather recap + what is a cold front?

By: Paige Klobucnik

Hi guys! Sorry for the late post this week, I got back from Austin yesterday and was busy trying to get my life back together lol. I hope you all enjoyed the rain from last week, it was much needed, and it helped us start this week with some cooler-fall-like weather. Though the temperatures feel cooler than they have been, the rest of this week we are still seeing above normal temperatures for the start of October, with highs approaching the mid 80s. Skies will remain clear, with warm afternoons and cool nights/early mornings. With these clear skies, the surface is able to cool off considerably throughout the night time, because radiation from the surface is able to escape to the atmosphere. So enjoy these mornings with temperatures in the high 50s-low 60s, I know I will be happy to go into work these mornings! No severe weather is expected this week, so just enjoy the clear skies and early fall weather! :)

I was at Austin City Limits this weekend, where the whole weekend was rainy and cloudy, causing the mud to be pretty gnarly, but it was nice to not have the hot sun beaming down on Zilker park! My friend Lily and I were very prepared with our cute rain boots, which were so muddy I had to discard after the weekend.

Me at Austin City Limits!!!!

My friend and I did our best to be prepared for this crazy weather, and we ended up having such an amazing time! (shout out Lily!!!) She actually got interviewed by CBS to explain how she was prepared for this rainy weekend, watch the interview here at, (Lily being awesome)! 

Anyways, in additional information, I wanted to do a quick lesson on what cold fronts are, since last week we saw one, and they are actually quite interesting phenomena! As an overview, a cold front is the leading edge of a cooler, denser air mass that advances and replaces a warmer air mass! This diagram below is the easiest way for me to clearly see how it operates. There is a major density difference between cold and warm air, which is a big driver for a lot of atmospheric air movement in general. Cold air is heavier and denser than warm air, so it wedges itself under warm air, this dense air forces the lighter, warm air to rise quickly into the atmosphere, and as this warm air rises, it cools down and its moisture condenses to form clouds and precipitation. Cold fronts bring us heavy showers, thunderstorms, gusty winds, and severe weather in general that can occur right along the boundary (rising air = condensing = clouds & rain). And as the name implies, temperatures at cold fronts drop and humidity decreases and the cool, dry air mass settles in behind the front!

Thank you guys for reading! Cold fronts are a really important thing to understand, so I hoped you learned something enjoyable! Next time you see a weather map, look out for the cold front symbol, and you can be a forecaster like me :3 Essentially, the cold front is a boundary of 2 air masses, a cooler one pushing under a warmer one, creating cool stuff in-between!!!

What a cold front looks like!