Round Three Tonight.

The round of showers/storms last night produced some badly needed rainfall for some locations as you can see from the map on the right courtesy of the OK Mesonet. Unfortunately, most of us did not get enough to do much more than settle the dust and are badly in need of more rain. The second map on the right is a QPF(Quantitative Precipitation Forecast) for tonight through Thursday which suggests the potential for an inch or so across the state. We can certainly use it.

Unfortunately, along with the rain will come lots of lightning and thunder and some severe weather with damaging winds and hail the primary threats. Over the last couple of nights, the severe weather for E OK has been fairly minimal with only isolated reports of damaging winds and hail. For our more western neighbors, including the OKC area, they have really borne the brunt of the severe weather so far.

Storms are forming in the TX Panhandle and W KS at this time for round three of this stormy pattern we have been in. We anticipate that activity will be spreading on eastward and moving across E OK later tonight with some lingering showers/storms into the morning hours of Thursday. By Thursday afternoon, we should be seeing some breaks in the clouds and with a brisk north wind, it will be cooler. In fact, daytime highs should be in the 70s for the next couple of days which will be a nice break from the 90s of the last few days.

As we go through the weekend and into early next week, the forecast gets a little tricky. We will have a return S to SE surface wind which will warm things back up. But aloft, we will have a weak NW flow pattern which is often an unsettled pattern. Given the weakness of the flow aloft, it does not appear that any major systems will be coming our way, but have decided to introduce at least a chance of a few late night or early morning showers/storms for early Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and that may quite possibly extend further into next week as well. Any additional rainfall will certainly be welcome.

In the meantime, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot