Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Quiet Weather Pattern Next Few Days

<p>A much quieter weather pattern will prevail heading into the coming weekend along with a warming trend after a couple of cool mornings.</p>

Tuesday, April 28th 2015, 8:13 pm

By: News On 6


The rain and showers have pretty much moved out, or will be shortly, and we will be left with a more stable pattern for the rest of this week and into the coming weekend.

The cloudy skies and lingering showers for today certainly kept temperatures on the mild side for this time of year as you can see from the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. Our normal diurnal temperature range for this time of year here in Tulsa is 75/54 so we were nearly 10 degrees below normal for our daytime high.

And, the recent rains have certainly been generous, particularly for those locations that needed it most. Notice the total rainfall over the course of the last 3 days and obviously the more western states have received the greatest totals. As mentioned yesterday, those locations have also been most severely impacted by the drought of the last 5 years, but in some cases there was too much too fast and there were some flooding issues.

Next is the map, also courtesy of the OK Mesonet, showing the rainfall totals over the course of the last 30 days; again, a good soaking for most of the state, but particularly so for the more western counties which needed it the most.

As mentioned before, these rains are not a drought breaker but have certainly put a significant dent in the drought. If we can have anything close to normal rainfall across the state for the month of May, that will also go a long ways to alleviating the drought. After all, this time of year is normally our wettest time of year, so if we don't get our normal spring rains, that often sets the stage for a brutal summer.

Will have the outlook for the month of May in tomorrow's blog, but first let's get through April, which is certainly ending on a cool note. However, despite the relatively cool, rainy period of the last week or so, temperatures for the month are still running 3 degrees above normal.

For tonight, clearing skies and a light NW breeze should result in a very cool start to Wednesday morning with most of us in the low-mid 40s. We will have some passing middle level clouds that afternoon and with light northerly winds, temperatures should be in the mid-70s which is close to normal.

Thursday morning will also get off to a clear, cool start, but as we head on into the weekend temperatures will be warming up each day as our winds return to a more southerly direction. For springtime around here, this will be an unusually quiet pattern with relatively light winds and no mention of showers/storms as you can see on our forecast page.

Southerly winds will become a little stronger on Saturday, then, a gusty south wind is expected for Sunday into early next week which will bring more moisture this way. At the same time, the winds aloft will be changing allowing for increasing chances of showers/storms. Notice the 5 day QPF map has us essentially high and dry with the possible exception of the more northern counties where a few showers may pop up late Sunday. As we head into next week though, the pattern will become more unsettled once again with better chances of showers/storms.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot

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