Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Hot & Humid

Although our first 90 degree temperatures were a little late in arriving this year, daytime highs over the last week have certainly jumped straight into summer.  We have had 4 straight days of 90+ temperatures, then the cloudy skies of yesterday and today provided a brief break as you can see on the max/min temperature map across the state, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.  Most locations remained in the 80s today, but not for much longer as the heat will be building back over us with a vengeance in the days ahead.

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The system that produced the clouds also brought some decent rains for some locations, too much for some locations, and others missed out altogether.  The statewide rainfall map for the last 3 days, also courtesy of the OK Mesonet, shows where the winners and losers were in that regard.  Hope you picked up some decent rains at your house as our prospects in the weeks ahead are not looking very good as you can see on our forecast page.

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There are some indications of a complex of storms moving out of the High Plains that may impact our more northern counties by early Tuesday morning and then another possibility of a few pop up showers or storms during the afternoon/evening hours.  Wednesday could also see a few isolated pop up showers or storms during the afternoon/evening hours and cannot rule out a few isolated showers for Friday and Saturday.  But, as you can see on the 7 day QPF map, our prospects for any widespread, decent rainfall are pretty much in the slim to none category. 

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So, without much in the way of any cooling showers temperatures will be much warmer than normal all this week and quite likely for much longer than that.  To put things into perspective, our normal daytime high at this time of year here in Tulsa is 87 and we have had an 88 so far today.  Again, referring to our forecast page, you can see we will be well into the 90s for the rest of the week, through the weekend, and quite likely for all of next week as well. 

By the way, according to the calendar, summer officially begins one week from today but as has been mentioned before, from a meteorological perspective summer is considered to be the calendar months of Jun-Aug.  At any rate, the heat and humidity that will be building this week will put the heat index into dangerous territory.  Look for those values to be topping out around 105 or more starting on Wednesday and for at least the next several days after that.

As mentioned, it looks like the heat will persist well beyond this forecast cycle as you can see on the long range guidance over the 8-14 day time frame.  That guidance continues to suggest a strong signal of above normal temperatures and below normal precipitation.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot