Warming Trend Into the Weekend; Chances of Rain as Well.

Much milder conditions will be the general rule for the rest of this week and into the coming weekend with temperatures running well above normal.  In fact, the max/min of 52/37 here in Tulsa today was well above the normal values of 48/27.  Notice the max/min values for the rest of the state were also relatively mild except for the far eastern counties where the clouds hung tough throughout the day today.

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Speaking of clouds, mostly cloudy to overcast skies will be returning for the overnight hours with little or no sunshine for Wednesday.  There may also be some patchy fog in some areas for the overnight hours.  At any rate, the clouds will have an impact on temperatures with morning lows in the 30s to near 40 and daytime highs in the upper 40s to lower 50s.  In addition, a system moving across Texas will spread some showers northward overnight with at least a slight chance of some light rain or a few showers, primarily over the more SE counties by first thing in the morning and perhaps a few lingering into the afternoon.  Winds will be light and variable for the overnight hours and a light SE breeze during the day.

Thursday & Friday are both looking pretty good with even milder conditions along with at least some sunshine both days.  Lots of lingering cloud cover should hold temperatures at least somewhat in check but daytime highs should still reach the 60s both days along with morning lows in the 40s as you can see on our forecast page.  Light southerly winds on Thursday will be stronger on Friday and that will continue into the day Saturday.

The next storm system aloft will be moving our way Saturday keeping us with lots of cloud cover and gusty southerly winds ahead of it.  That also means very mild temperatures and an increasing chance of showers and rain, particularly late in the day or overnight.

A cold front will push across the state Saturday night, but this is not of arctic origin so although it will cool us off again for the Sunday/Monday time frame, temperatures will still be above normal with morning lows in the 40s Sunday morning and in the lower 30s Monday morning.  Look for a short thermometer on Sunday with gusty northerly winds and temperatures holding in the 40s to around 50 for daytime highs. 

There will also be a good chance of showers/rain off and on for Sunday ending Sunday night or early Monday morning for the more eastern counties.  Although this is a vigorous storm system, all indications to this point suggest it will have limited moisture availability until it gets east of us.  Notice the 7 day QPF has relatively light potential for us but much higher amounts on east of us.  Notice also, the very wet conditions for the W Coast as additional storm systems will be impacting that area over the coming 7 days.  To this point, indications are that most of the moisture gets wrung out by the mountains and the systems have very little to work with by the time they get here.  But further east, these storm systems have tapped into additional moisture making locations on east of us very wet.

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Eventually, we will get one that will tap into a good moisture source to bring us another wet event and then the question will be if it also has cold air to tap into.  Right now, the trends suggest the warmer than normal conditions of this week through the weekend will be replaced by below normal conditions going into the last week of the month as you can see on the 8-14 day outlook.  That is also painting us with a better chance of precipitation but it is far too early to determine if it will just be a cold rain or something wintry.

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So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot