Cold Again Friday, Warming Trend After That

Quite a change for today with the brisk northerly winds and clouds keeping us with a very short thermometer.  Notice the 24 hour temperature change map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet; in fact, the high for the calendar day in Tulsa was shortly after midnight when we were at 41.  So far, the low has been 31, but we may be colder than that by midnight tonight, so it has been one of those days. 

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Despite the cloud cover, it has also been dry and drought continues to rear its ugly head around the state.  Here is the latest drought summary, which has changed very little since last week for us.  But, if we do not get some good moisture in the coming weeks, then we can expect those conditions to deteriorate further.  Quite frankly, the outlook is not very promising anytime soon, but more about that later.

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First, for tonight we do expect the clouds to be thinning enough to allow for better cooling by morning.  The cloud deck has been confined to a fairly shallow zone around the 6,000’ level today, but the sun was still unable to burn through it.  As we go through the night, those clouds are still expected to be thinning out and with those northerly winds subsiding to around 10 mph; that combination will allow temperatures to drop into the low-mid 20s to start the day on Friday.

Friday will have a mix of sun and clouds, but still enough cloud cover to keep our daytime highs in the low-mid 40s for the most part.  At least the winds will not be as strong with a NE breeze around 8-15mph and diminishing by evening.

Our winds will return to a more SE direction for Saturday, but again the clouds will be a wild card regarding how much temperatures can recover.  Right now, it looks like mostly cloudy skies will be the general rule but we will still moderate at least somewhat with morning lows near 30 and daytime highs upper 40s to near 50. 

Sunday into early next week will be much warmer, as you can see on our forecast page, due to continued southerly winds.  But, clouds will still be a wild card regarding how much warming will take place on any given day. 

Despite the cloud cover, the wind pattern aloft is not particularly supportive of any widespread precipitation.  We will have a chance of some drizzle or a few light showers on Sunday, particularly for the more eastern counties and late in the day.  There may even be a rumble of thunder into the day Monday but the pattern continues to shunt the deeper moisture, better instability, and therefore better rain chances on east of us.  Notice the 7 day QPF which continues to suggest what rain does fall will be on the light side.

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Our next cold front is on tap to arrive during the day Tuesday.  There is still some uncertainty regarding its timing, but right now it appears that it will be arriving from late morning into the early afternoon for most of us.  That means a very warm start Tuesday morning followed by the wind shift but the cooler air will likely be delayed somewhat so still a very mild day until it turns colder that night.  Also, the SW winds ahead of the front will likely push most of the moisture well to our east so very little, if any, shower activity with the front itself.

That will be followed by cooler conditions again for the Wednesday/Thursday time frame, but it still looks to be dry.  In fact, this cool down looks to be rather brief with a return to above normal temperatures in time for that following weekend and beyond as you can see on the 8-14 day guidance.  Little or no mention of rain is also projected for that time frame either.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot