Mild Friday Morning, Hot Weekend. - NewsOn6.com - Tulsa, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports - KOTV.com |

Some lucky folks received a good soaking from those showers/storms that went through this morning and early this afternoon. The map on the right, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, shows both rain gauge readings as well as radar estimates. If you caught a good rain, count your blessings as there is only a slight chance for redevelopment through the afternoon/evening hours. Also, the coming weekend looks to be hot and dry.

The cloud cover and showers have kept temperatures pretty much in the 80s this afternoon, but we should have generally fair overnight skies and somewhat drier air will be brought in by a more NE surface wind. That will allow for a relatively mild start to the day Friday with morning lows in the 60s. Lots of sunshine during the day will overcome those NE winds though, and daytime highs are expected to be in the lower 90s for Friday afternoon.

Things will be heating up for the weekend with a return to a S/SE wind on Saturday and along with mostly sunny skies should get us into the mid-upper 90s that afternoon. Sunday looks to be the hottest day of this forecast cycle and stands a good chance of being our first triple digit day of the year. Sunny skies and a more S/SW surface wind together with a ridge aloft building overhead will combine to produce widespread triple digits temperatures. The westerly wind component is important as otherwise, the rain footprint from today's rainfall should be sufficient to keep most of us a few degrees cooler than would otherwise be the case.

After that, things get a little more complicated. Although we will maintain very warm temperatures aloft, at the surface there are consistent indications of our surface winds going to a more E or E/SE direction for early next week. That, together with the rain footprint mentioned above typically is good for knocking a few degrees off our maximum temperatures. Will have to take a wait and see approach to that though as the very warm temperatures aloft are a cause for concern.

Also, those conditions are not favorable for any more shower/storms after today so we will have basically a dry forecast through the weekend and into the following week.

As always, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot