Warm & Windy Tuesday, Cool & Wet Wednesday.

After a chilly start to our day, the southerly winds and abundant sunshine certainly warmed things up rather nicely.  Notice that some locations were in the 30s this morning followed by that nice rebound as you can see on the max/min map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.  For Tulsa, we topped out at 76 after starting the day at 42 and here is the link to the normal and extreme values in Tulsa at this time of year.

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Tonight will be much milder due to a brisk southerly wind continuing through the overnight hours.  Look for morning lows to range from the upper 50s to near 60 but a SE breeze of 10-20 mph will also persist overnight.  After the mild start, Tuesday will be warm and windy with gusty southerly winds once again along with an increase in cloud cover by late afternoon.  There will still be enough sunshine for afternoon temperatures to make it well into the 80s so a very warm and windy day.

Those winds will also bring increasing low level moisture back our way and with a cold front expected to move through early Wednesday morning, that combination will set off another round of showers and storms.  Notice there is a risk of a few storms becoming severe, but the timing is not particularly favorable and the depth of the quality moisture is also in question.  However, the upper level support looks rather impressive so that does raise the possibility of a wind/hail threat.  The timing is such that a few storms could be developing out ahead of the front during the early evening hours although a better chance is expected with the front itself which would be after midnight. 

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Gusty NW winds and much cooler conditions will then prevail through the day Wednesday along with some lingering light rain or showers as you can see on our forecast page.  In fact, Wednesday looks to be a rather raw day with the overcast skies, strong NW winds, and temperatures holding in the 50s for most of the day.

That will lead to another very chilly start to the day on Thursday, but a return to light SE winds and partly cloudy skies should at least get us back into the 60s that afternoon.  After that, most of the day Friday looks pleasant enough with southerly winds and a nice warm-up, but that will just set the stage for another, very strong storm system to impact our weekend weather.  Since this system is currently well out in the Pacific, there are lots of uncertainties regarding the timing, track, and intensity, which also leads to reduced confidence in any one of the various extended model solutions for that time frame.  Although the specifics differ, the longer range guidance does suggest this system has the potential to produce another round of flooding rainfall along with a threat of severe storms.  Notice the 7 day QPF map certainly is painting a wet picture for Green Country so strongly suggest keeping a close eye on the weather as there will no doubt be some changes leading up to the event itself as we get better data initialization and solutions in the coming days.

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Not only does this look to be a very wet system but also a very cool one and that trend spills over into the 8-14 day outlook which suggests temperatures averaging below normal going into that first week of May.  It also suggests that the active weather pattern should begin to settle down at least somewhat during that time frame.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot