High Fire Danger Wednesday.

Not much time today.  For those of you familiar with my family situation, my sister who lives in SW KS lost everything to the wildfires last night.  Needless to say, this has been a long day but wanted to give at least a brief look at our current weather situation.

To begin with, look at the relative humidity levels as of late this afternoon, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.  Those values are absolutely incredible.  That very dry air will be slow to moderate through Wednesday and will contribute to the ongoing fire danger concerns.

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That very dry air will also allow for a quick cool down tonight with clear skies and light winds in place.  The result will be temperatures dropping into the low-mid 30s with some of the outlying, more rural locations possibly dropping below freezing for a short time.  Frost is not likely though because the air is so dry.

Sunny skies and a return to southerly winds will result in a quick rebound for the afternoon hours and look for temperatures to reach the low 70s.  But, those winds will be gusty and that means another high fire danger situation.

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Moisture will be returning on Thursday with a slight chance of showers continuing into the morning hours of Friday.  We really need a good soaking and the longer range guidance is a little more promising now with a system moving across the state on Saturday.  Notice the 7 day QPF has brought a more significant amount of moisture into at least the eastern half of the state and we have raised the rain chances accordingly as you can see on the forecast page.  As additional guidance comes in, may be able to raise those numbers even more; sure hope so as we do need the moisture.

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Notice also that temperatures will be on quite a roller coaster ride over the forecast period as well as a number of fast moving systems move across the state.  None of these have any really cold air to work with though, but there will be some pretty good changes from day to day over the course of the coming week.  That continues to be a reflection of the very fast zonal jet stream aloft alluded to in yesterday’s blog.  This all leads to considerable difficulty in timing just when and with what intensity each of the frontal incursions into our weather will take place so this is basically a rather low confidence forecast.  The longer range guidance from model to model and from run to run has been flipping on nearly a daily basis so that does not lead to much confidence either.

At any rate, we expect to see a continuation of the very mild conditions that have dominated our weather since early January as temperatures are expected to average above normal over the 8-14 day time frame.  Notice there is now at least a chance of scattered chances of showers/storms during that time frame.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot