Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Finally A Break In Our Daily Dousings

As you can see from the 24-hour rainfall map as of late this afternoon, too much rain too fast has once again created some flooding issues across much of the state. The second map shows the 30 day totals across our state, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, and those numbers continue to set records for not only the wettest May, but the wettest month ever for the statewide average.

For Tulsa, our official rainfall total, so far for the month, of just under 15” puts us solidly into second place for the month of May, behind only the 18” recorded in May of 1943. For any month, we are currently in 5th place for wettest month on record.

Fortunately, the pattern is showing signs of finally starting to change as a cool front will be moving across the state during the early morning into the early afternoon hours of Saturday. That will mark a pattern change at the surface and aloft that will be less supportive of the widespread, heavy rains we have dealt with for much of this month.

The front should be arriving here in NE OK first thing Saturday morning and exiting the SE counties by early afternoon. This timing will minimize the threat of any big storms although some scattered showers and perhaps some thunder will be possible as the front moves through.

That will be followed by brisk northerly winds, and with lingering cloud cover all day long, temperatures will only make it into the low-mid 70s - nearly 10 degrees below normal. Sunday will also be quite cool with morning lows in the 50s and daytime highs in the 70s along with a NE wind. We should see at least some afternoon sunshine, although clear skies are not anticipated.

Our forecast page has the coming week pretty close to normal with respect to temperatures as our winds return to a southerly direction and we will have at least some sunshine. More importantly though is the absence of any organized showers or storms coming our way during that time frame.

An isolated shower or two will be possible on just about any given day, particularly for the more eastern counties, but the chances of any one location getting wet will be less than 10%. That will finally allow things to start drying out.

Notice the 7-day QPF map, for example, been quite a while since we have seen a relatively dry QPF map for our part of the world. Again, it does suggest the potential for a few spotty showers for the far eastern counties.

Not only that, but as you can see from the 6-10 day outlook, we will have a below normal chance of precipitation going through that time frame as well. It may take that long for things to dry out enough to get some yard work done without fear of getting stuck!

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot