Some sleet possible for us ... but Texas!!!

6:45 p.m. Thursday update ... The National Weather Service has issued a Freezing Rain Advisory for the row of counties north of Mecklenburg. Basically, it means light ice accumulations are possible early Friday in all Charlotte-area counties except Mecklenburg, Gaston, Lincoln, Cabarrus, Stanly, Union, Anson, Montgomery and Richmond in North Carolina; and all S.C. counties.

Areas in the advisory might get enough ice accumulation to cause slippery conditions on bridges and overpasses. Forecasters don't expect enough ice to cause power outages, though.

In the area not covered by the advisory -- that is, the immediate Charlotte area -- some sleet is forecast early Friday morning, but meteorologists don't expect the temperature to fall below freezing. Hence, no road problems are expected.

City of Charlotte road crews didn't take any chances. They spread a brine solution on city streets Thursday afternoon.

We'll keep an eye on things later tonight and early Friday.

Earlier post ...

A low pressure system will spread a very chilly rain into the Charlotte region later tonight, and there's a chance of sleet falling with the rain for several hours Friday morning.

Meteorologists don't think temperatures will fall much below freezing in Charlotte, so they don't anticipate problems on area roads in the morning. We'll keep an eye on that this evening and let you know if the forecast changes.

But what's happening today and tonight in southern Texas is more amazing.

The same low pressure system bringing us rain into Saturday morning is expected to drop accumulating snow on some places that rarely see it.

How about 2 to 3 inches in Houston? Or an inch (and maybe more) in San Antonio and Austin?

Better yet, how about an inch of snow and some sleet in Brownsville, on the U.S.-Mexico border. And accumulating snow is expected south of the border, at sea level in Mexico.

Temperatures haven't risen above freezing since early this week across much of the Lone Star State. In fact, morning lows were below zero today in El Paso and across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez. The thousands of people gathered in Dallas for Sunday's Super Bowl haven't seen temperatures above the 20s for several days.

Winter storm warnings for accumulating snow and sleet are posted Thursday evening and night from the Mexican-U.S. border, across southern Texas and southern Louisiana into Mississippi and Alabama.

It's a situation you don't see more than once every 20 or 30 years, meteorologists say.

Temperatures in Texas are expected to rebound into the 50s and 60s by the weekend, but another blast of cold air is coming next week.

And next week's arctic outbreak could affect the Carolinas -- unlike this week, when we escaped the worst of it.