Fire Danger For Tuesday

Some locations picked up a decent amount of rain over the weekend as you can see from the 24 hour rainfall totals as of Sunday afternoon, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.  An inch or more of rain was common N of hwy 412 but the totals dropped off quickly south of that.  The official observation in Tulsa as recorded at the airport was 1.67” which is a record for the date.

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Although there was some pesky fog this morning, lots of sunshine this afternoon along with a return to a southerly wind component has resulted in a nice rebound in temperatures with daytime highs in the 50s and 60s here in E OK.  For Tulsa, the max/min has been 57/29 which is much warmer than the 49/28 which is normal.

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A SE wind will continue through the overnight hours so that temperatures will be very mild despite fair skies and relatively dry air in place.  Look for morning lows to be generally in the lower 40s to start the day Tuesday and with winds of 10-15 mph overnight, fog will not be an issue.

Only a few high level cirrus clouds are expected for Tuesday so we will have lots of sunshine throughout the day.  We will also have strong and gusty S/SW winds in advance of a low pressure system that will be passing well north of us, but the tightening pressure gradient will make for a windy day.  The sunny skies together with the strong winds and temperatures warming well into the 60s and even lower 70s will lead to an enhanced fire danger situation.  Minimum relative humidity levels during the heat of the day will likely drop below the 30% level so despite the recent rainfall, this combination will make for dangerous fire weather conditions.

A stronger cold front will arrive Tuesday night, but this will be a dry system as it will be moisture starved.  However, brisk NW winds behind it will bring much cooler air back over the state; at least in relation to how warm we will be ahead of it.  Actually, temperatures will just return to more seasonal levels after a solid week of much warmer than normal conditions.

As you can see on our forecast page, daytime highs will be generally in the upper 40s to around 50 going through the coming weekend which is pretty close to normal.  Northerly winds for the rest of the week will keep drier air in place which will allow our nights to generally be in the 20s which will be at or somewhat below normal.

We will also have generally fair skies with only some occasional passing high level clouds through the time period so there is no threat of any precipitation any time soon.  In fact, as you can see on the 7 day QPF, we expect to be high and dry throughout that time frame.

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Looking further down the road, the 8-14 day outlooks suggest a return to warmer than normal conditions and keep us with a general drier than normal trend over that time frame.

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In the meantime, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot