Mild Week Ahead.

As you can see from the map on the right, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, our day got off to a milder start than what we have experienced this past week. That trend will continue for the week ahead. Southerly breezes through the overnight hours together with the clouds that moved in first thing this morning helped keep temperatures up, but those clouds will also impact our daytime highs. Mostly cloudy skies for the rest of the day today along with overcast skies tonight will keep daytime highs in the low-mid 60s for this afternoon, but only dropping into the mid-upper 40s for tonight.

The clouds are the result of a rather weak system aloft that will be moving overhead tonight and could wring out a few showers. Will keep the chances at about 30% for tonight as there is just not much moisture for this system to work with. A few showers may linger into the morning hours for the more eastern counties as the system moves on eastward. The mostly cloudy skies that will also linger through the day Monday will keep daytime highs in the 60s again.

Since there is not a surface reflection of the system aloft, then our winds will remain from a southerly direction until a cool front does arrive late Thursday or into the day Friday. That means our nights will remain on the mild side with overnight lows in the 40s to near 50 right on through Thanksgiving Day. The optical thickness of the cloud cover will be the wild card regarding how warm our days will be but we are expecting to be well into the 60s each day and could even make it into the lower 70s by Tuesday or Wednesday.

After tonight, our next chance of showers will be on Thanksgiving Day and into Black Friday. The longer range guidance remains inconsistent in dealing with a cool front that should arrive either that night or into the day on Friday. At any rate, this does not look to be a big rainmaker either and will hold the chances at 30% until we get a better consensus.

Once that front moves through, it will turn cooler again, but not as cold as this past week the way things are looking now. However, we continue to see hints of a much stronger cold front arriving early that following week which will easily be the coldest of the season.

Until then, stay tuned and enjoy this nice, mild fall weather.

Dick Faurot