Much Cooler-Again!

<p>The last 7 days have been characterized by flooding rains and severe weather. &nbsp;For the most part the coming 7 days look a little better, but there are some exceptions.</p>

Monday, May 22nd 2017, 8:57 pm

By: News On 6


What a week.  Notice the rainfall totals over the past 7 days, as recorded by the good folks at the OK Mesonet, and it is not hard to see why area lakes are so high.  With Memorial Day weekend coming up, here is a link to the lake levels and where you can track any changes.

[img]

Not only were the rains excessive, but severe weather was also an issue and the good folks at the local NWS office have now completed their surveys and concluded a total of 7 tornadoes occurred.  Notice they ranged from EF0 to EF2 on the intensity scale and the individual spin-ups were embedded along the leading edge of a squall line and were moving quite rapidly to the NE whereas the line itself was only making slow eastward progress, relatively speaking.  That lead to training of storms repeatedly over the same areas and therefore the heaviest rains were in those areas as well.

[img]

At least the system moved out in time to give us a marvelous day on Sunday, but this is May and another system is moving through at this time and is once again producing showers and some embedded storms.  The previous system pretty well scoured out the moisture though so the current one does not have much to work with.  Also, the actual cool front will not be arriving till during the early morning hours of Tuesday.  Even so, the current system has produced a few storms with hail in the SW part of the state.

Patchy, mostly light showers will persist off and on through tonight and into the day Tuesday, but rainfall amounts will be very light.  Any leftover showers will come to an end by evening but the clouds will likely persist right on through the day Wednesday with clearing not expected until that night.  Together with gusty NW winds both days, that means relatively cool conditions for this time of year.  Temperatures tonight will drop into the upper 50s by morning, but the clouds, some shower activity, and brisk NW winds will keep us in the 60s for the afternoon hours.

Wednesday will be cooler with a morning low near 50, but again, the clouds and a brisk NW wind will keep afternoon temperatures in the 60s.  If we do see some sunshine late in the day, we might make it to 70.  The normal and record values can be seen here and we do not look to threaten any records, but it will still be cool for this time of year.

Mostly sunny skies and a return to a southerly wind component will really warm things up Thursday afternoon after a cool start as you can see on our forecast page.  Gusty southerly winds and much warmer temperatures, particularly at night, will then prevail going into the coming weekend.

However, the longer range guidance is once again not being very consistent in how our weekend will pan out.  One data set, the GFS, is considered to be an outlier as it is inconsistent with the ensemble solutions and other data sets so has been discounted.  I mention that because the forecast is based primarily on the European solution which brings a front through during the day Saturday which would then be followed by northerly breezes, lots of sunshine and some pleasant weather for Sunday and Monday.  The GFS on the other hand, is much slower and therefore much wetter with lingering showers through Sunday and into the day Monday.  In either event, there is the potential for storms to be severe on Saturday so that time period will be closely watched in subsequent data runs to see if these trends hold.

At any rate, the rainfall totals over the coming 7 days certainly suggest much lighter amounts for the state during that time frame in comparison to what we recently endured.

[img]

However, the longer range guidance for the 8-14 day period once again suggests a more active period along with a trend to below normal temperatures. So, stay tuned for updates.

[img]

[img]

Dick Faurot

logo

Get The Daily Update!

Be among the first to get breaking news, weather, and general news updates from News on 6 delivered right to your inbox!

More Like This

May 22nd, 2017

March 14th, 2024

December 4th, 2023

September 25th, 2023

Top Headlines

March 18th, 2024

March 18th, 2024

March 18th, 2024

March 18th, 2024