Storm Chances Continue Across Eastern Oklahoma

Some patchy fog will be likely in a few spots early this morning with temps in the 60s and lower 70s. Once again, we’ll be in the running for some widely spaced, scattered thunderstorms today across eastern Oklahoma with highs in the upper into the lower 90s.  A few of the storms may produce some heavy tropical downpours along with some lightning and small hail and briefly trigger a severe thunderstorm warning or two. The odds of any significant severe weather will continue to be very low.  A weak shear zone (disturbance) is located across far eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas today but will weaken and lose influence over the area.  Some leftover storms are still up across northwestern Oklahoma early this morning from a separate disturbance but will continue to drop out quickly.  This batch will more than likely deposit an outflow somewhere near or west of I-35 that will activate with this afternoon with storms across north central Oklahoma later today.  These will (should) remain west of our area. 

WARN Interactive Radar

Friday into Saturday a mid-level ridge of high pressure will develop across the Mexican Plateau and nudge into north central Texas into part of Oklahoma.  The top edge of the ridge will allow a northwest flow from Kansas into northern Oklahoma this weekend.  As stated here many times, this pattern is notorious for bringing storms into the state from the northwest.   We have elected to keep the pops at 30 to near 40% for Friday night into Saturday morning based on the pattern and some signals in the data.  The 3KWRF points toward a line of thunderstorm activity (or a small complex) that could develop and move across our area Friday night into pre-dawn Saturday.  This would bring the possibility of some severe weather with damaging winds the main threat.   At this point, the extended Holiday period looks mostly warm and muggy with THI values in the mid to upper 90s.  A few isolated pop-up storms will be mentioned for Sunday and Monday but the odds would remain less than 10%.  We’re still a few days out and this period may undergo some changes. 

NewsOn6.com Weather Apps

We’re still watching the possibility of a Gulf of Mexico low developing the next few days and migrating northward.  The spread in the positioning is of course rather large.  It appears the closest this feature could possibly get to our area would be around eastern Arkansas or western Mississippi next week.   Close but not close enough.  But as stated here yesterday, it’s a wild card that could change some things next week.  It’s just highly doubtful that it will have any real impact on our sensible weather.

Thanks for reading the Thursday morning weather discussion and blog.