Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Warmer, Then Much Cooler

From the max/min temperature map for today, it is obvious we have had a very pleasant day as many locations made to around the 60 degree mark. By the way, through the day yesterday the month of January was running 2 degrees cooler than normal, on average, and obviously the numbers for today will start bringing that up.

In fact, as you can see on our forecast page, much warmer than normal conditions will also prevail for Thursday, which will also help to bring that average up even more.

Not for long, though, as colder air will be arriving on Friday and much colder conditions will prevail for the weekend into the early part of next week.

First things first though, and, although we will have fair skies tonight, a light southerly breeze should keep most of us above the freezing mark to start the day. The light winds and fair skies may also result in some patchy fog for the early morning hours.

That will be quickly burning off, though, as gusty southerly winds will develop after sunrise and we should have plenty of sunshine for the balance of the day. As a result, temperatures will be even warmer than today with most of us at or above the 60 degree mark.

A cool front will be arriving Thursday night, which could produce a few brief rain showers, which will be out of the area by sunrise Friday morning. Since temperatures will be above freezing, anything that does fall will be liquid.

We expect skies to be quickly clearing which should leave us with partly cloudy to, at times, mostly sunny skies for the balance of the day. As a result, despite a brisk NW wind, temperatures will be cooler but still somewhat above normal for Friday afternoon.

Cannot say the same about the weekend into early next week, though, as colder air will certainly be more evident - with daytime highs in the 30s to around 40, and overnight lows generally in the 20s. Brisk northerly winds will make it feel even colder.

In addition to that, the wind flow aloft will be primarily from the NW, and that pattern will often have some disturbances embedded that will bring clouds and occasionally some precipitation with them. That will be possible for Saturday and again late Sunday into the day Monday.

The temperature profile aloft during that time frame would support snow, but these systems do not have much moisture to work with and will be rather weak at any rate. Even so, cannot rule some light snow, primarily for the more southern counties over that time frame and perhaps even enough to cover the ground. At any rate, what does fall will be light, as you can see on the 7-day QPF map.

After that, our winds return to a more southerly direction going into the middle of next week, bringing a return to warmer conditions. There are also indications of a stronger, wetter system arriving toward the middle to latter part of next week.

In fact, as you can see on the 8-14-day outlooks, temperatures are expected to be running near normal and precipitation chances above normal for late next week through that following weekend. By the way, the normal max/min for this time of year is 48/27 in Tulsa which also means we have turned the corner from a climatological perspective. The trend from now till the middle of summer is for our average temperatures, both at night and during the day, to gradually increase.

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

Dick Faurot