Warm & Not As Humid Thursday Across Eastern Oklahoma

The real deal front is moving across northeastern Oklahoma.  I stepped outside this morning at 1 am and it was sauna.  But as the front progresses southeast this morning, dry air will quickly follow and this will bring relative humidity down (for northeast Oklahoma) into the 50% range by 10 am to noon and possibly in the 30 to 40% range for the afternoon.   Yes, it will still be warm with highs in the upper 80s and a few lower 90s, but we should be able to feel the difference with the dry air across most of northeastern Oklahoma. 

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The thunderstorms yesterday barely clipped the metro.  Locations northwest of the downtown region to southeastern Kansas missed out on the rainfall while spots to the east and southeast picked up anywhere between .50 inch and over 3 inches of rainfall.  We’ll probably have a few small spotty showers or even thunder showers this morning along the front, but by the time most folks are up and out, the front will be southeast and the small pops will be gone.  This front will reside across far southeastern Oklahoma tonight and Friday morning before lifting northward late Friday night into Saturday morning.  A few showers or storms will be possible during the day Friday, but the best chance will be from a developing MCS ( complex of storms) for late Friday night into pre-dawn Saturday.

Interactive Radar

The upper levels support a closed low moving across the Missouri Valley today with a relatively fast upper flow trailing across the central plains for the next few days.   Several short waves will arrive and help to trigger storms to our northwest.  A surface low may also develop Friday to our northwest and allow the front to slowly move northward Friday into Saturday morning.  This will give us the usual west to northwest flow MCS highway across northern Oklahoma.  A decent chance of this complex will remain in the forecast from about Friday at midnight through 7 am Saturday morning.   We’ll be able to narrow this down tomorrow, but at this point, it appears the main metro window would be around midnight to 2 am.  Damaging straight-line winds and some hail would be the main severe weather risk.

As the front moves northward, it will probably stall around the metro and may provide form additional storms late Saturday afternoon into Sunday morning before the boundary lifts into southeastern Kansas Sunday night into Monday.  Some of these will have the potential to become severe.   There is some concern of a super cell threat along this boundary in some of the data.  We'll explore this topic more closely tomorrow.  Going forward, I should probably keep a slight chance of storms Monday through Wednesday of next week due to the proximity of this boundary but mid-level heights will also be climbing.  This will limit our precip chances to mostly the far northern Oklahoma and southeastern Kansas region while bringing the heat and humidity back into the region.

The medium to long range data is not optimistic.  We are finally seeing the dreaded 594 DM ridging beginning to show up around the early part of July.   We were concerned that this ridge would make an early appearance.  It will probably migrate for a while but this early appearance in early July is not what we need. 

Thanks for reading the Thursday morning weather discussion and blog.