Warmer And Drier This Week

It should be no surprise that so far the month of August is running well below normal with respect to temperature. In fact, temperatures are running more than 4 degrees cooler than normal and 7-9 degrees cooler than the last 3 years to this point. We are also wetter than normal so far for the month.

Since July was also cooler than normal, this has been a relatively mild summer so far and folks have been asking if this portends a bad winter. The good folks at the local National Weather Service Office did a study on that following the extremely cool summer of 2004 and found that a cool summer does not necessarily lead to a cool, wet winter. If you would like to read up on that, here is the link: http://www.srh.noaa.gov/tsa/?n=summer2004

Of course, we still have nearly half of the month of August ahead of us and since temperatures will be trending up this week we will likely finish the month with temperatures much closer to normal. In fact, after another cool start today, look for temperatures to be warmer for the rest of the week. We will be a bit cooler than normal again this afternoon with daytime highs expected to be in the upper 80s to near 90, but after that our daytime highs should be in the low 90s with perhaps even a few days in the mid 90s as the week wears on. Our nights will also be trending upward with upper 60s expected for tonight and lower 70s for the rest of the week. Also, the longer range guidance going into that last week of the month suggests that temperatures will be close to normal during that time frame as well.

Fortunately, dew point temperatures are expected to remain in the low-mid 60s which will keep the afternoon relative humidity levels low enough that the heat index should not be as much of an issue as it was at the beginning of the month. That is partly due to the winds remaining rather light and from a general S to SE direction. The deeper moisture and higher humidity levels should be pretty well confined to the immediate coastal environment in TX and LA; at least for the next several days.

That also means that our rain chances will be in the slim to none category for the rest of the week. Notice the QPF map on the right which clearly shows OK to be high and dry all this week. We may see a few isolated showers/storms in the more terrain favored locations for the latter half of the weekend and into that following week, but nothing like what we have recently experienced.

This is all due to changes in the wind pattern aloft. Upper level ridging will be building back over the state suppressing any chances of rain and bringing temperatures back to more seasonal levels this week. However, this ridge will be rather transient and therefore we are not expecting the extremes of temperature that have characterized the last couple of summers.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot