Records Likely to Fall Saturday.

What a difference a day can make!  Temperatures this afternoon are 20 degrees or more warmer than at the same time yesterday so it has been a quick return to Spring-like conditions today.

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Problem is that those warm temperatures have also been accompanied by strong and gusty southerly winds, low humidity levels, and the associated fire danger concerns.  Since fire danger has been a major concern in recent weeks, the governor has issued a burn ban to include the entire eastern half of the state for the next two weeks.

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Although we did not set any records on this side of the state today, we will be much warmer on Saturday and will break records for warmest morning low and warmest daytime high for the date.  Not only will we break the records, we will shatter them; the current records for the max/min on Feb 11 is 77/54 set on the respective dates of 1951 and 1915.  Our current forecast for the max/min on Saturday is 85/59 and to break existing records by that much is remarkable.  By the way, the normal values at this time of year are 52/30.

The strong southerly winds we have had today will diminish somewhat for the overnight hours and low level moisture is also returning.  As the moisture returns, we will also have at least some morning cloud cover and that will contribute to the extremely warm start to the day.  The morning cloud cover should quickly dissipate leaving us with lots of afternoon sunshine.  S/SW winds of 15-25 and gusty at times for the morning to around the noon hour will begin to gradually subside during the afternoon as a cold front comes our way.

That front will arrive before the midnight hour accompanied by gusty northerly winds through the day Sunday and temperatures which will be some 30 degrees colder that afternoon.  Even so, that will still be warmer than normal given how warm we will be tomorrow.  We will also have mostly cloudy skies, but this will not be much of a rainmaker.  Cannot rule out a few sprinkles over the far SE counties, but that should be the extent of it.

Cloudy skies and cool conditions for the first of next week will also be accompanied by at least a chance of rain.  Unfortunately, most of those beneficial rains will be confined to the far southern counties and on into Texas as you can see on the 5 day QPF.  We will certainly take what moisture we can get, but this does not appear to be the widespread, soaking rains we so desperately need.  As mentioned in earlier blogs, the system responsible for the rains still looks to be primarily aimed at TX and we will be on the northern fringe of this particular system.  Notice also the strong N-S gradient in the possible rainfall which suggests that any deviation in the movement of the primary storm system could produce a large change in the rainfall amounts for a given location. 

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After that, as you can see on our forecast page, we expect to be dry for the middle to latter part of next week and another warm-up is expected in time for the next weekend as our winds return to a southerly direction.

Beyond that, the 8-14 day guidance continues to have a strong signal for temperatures on average to remain well above normal.  However, the longer range guidance is now suggesting at least some showers for that 8-14 day time frame.  We can sure use the moisture.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot