Alan Crone's Weather Blog: Much Colder This Weekend

While you were sleeping a cold front moved across northern OK and is now moving across the southeastern third of the state.   And a magnitude 4.7 earthquake occurred in the state at 1:42am this morning.    A surface ridge of high pressure will build down across northwestern OK and into northeastern sections of the state by midday allowing light wind, clear sky, and cool temperatures.   Daytime highs in the mid to upper 50s along with north winds near 10 mph will be likely this afternoon.   A much stronger cold front will roll across the state late Friday night bringing much colder air to the state for the weekend.   A hard freeze is likely to occur across a large portion of eastern OK by Sunday morning.  

The upper air pattern is allowing a significant cold air mass to roll across northwestern Canada into the northern high plains states today.   This air mass will move southward and impact Oklahoma sometime Friday evening with gusty northwest winds and falling temperatures.   There may be a few showers along or behind the boundary but this probably will remain low and mainly for a few hours post frontal into Saturday morning.   The timing of the boundary in the model data supports a late Friday night arrival.   But these types of shallow cold air masses typically arrive faster than data will support.   This means we may need to prepare you for a Friday night football game with winds from the northwest increasing speeds from the northwest at 20 to 30 mph by half time or so.   Saturday morning the winds will back from the northeast and remain in the 20 mph range for the first half of the day before decreasing by later Saturday afternoon.  

Temperatures Friday should reach the lower 60s.  

Saturday lows in the upper 30s will be followed by cold afternoon highs in the mid or upper 40s. 

A surface ridge of high pressure will build across the area Sunday morning.   Dry air and light wind will allow temperatures to drop into the mid-20s for a large portion of northeastern and eastern OK.   While some locations have experienced minor freezing temperatures earlier in the fall season, Sunday will represent the first wide-spread hard freeze for the majority of eastern OK.

The data is not consistent regarding next week.   But we do think another storm system will eventually be approaching the area with increasing rain chances followed by some seasonably cooler air.

GFS data is about a day or two faster than EURO runs.   We’ll refrain from making any statements about Thanksgiving since the data will no doubt continue to change for a few days before locking unto a more reliable solution.   But the confidence is increasing for a storm system nearing by the middle to end of next week.

Thanks for reading the Thursday morning weather discussion and blog.

Have a super great day!

Alan Crone
KOTV