Enjoy Thursday, Looks Like a Soggy Friday.

The weather got a little crazy yesterday and the survey teams are still analyzing the storm damage as I write so the totals regarding number and strength of tornadoes has yet to be finalized.  Needless to say it was an unusual event in the way it transpired with the tornadic spin-ups along the leading edge of the line of storms as the line moved through the area.  Spin-ups along the leading edge are particularly difficult to provide much lead time warning for as they are typically at the low end of the intensity spectrum and develop and dissipate very quickly without the upper level organization associated with the stronger, longer lived super cell type systems.  Notice the maximum winds reported yesterday as recorded by the OK Mesonet.  That is not to say that stronger winds did not occur, just that these are the strongest winds recorded by the anemometers maintained by the 100+ Mesonet sites across the state.

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That line of storms also dropped some soaking rains across much of the state as you can see from the 24 hour totals, again courtesy of the good folks at the OK Mesonet.

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Now that we have that system behind us, enjoy the day Thursday as another storm system is headed our way and will be spreading rain with chances of storms for Friday and Friday night.  For tonight though, clear skies and light winds together with the drier air brought in during the day today will allow temperatures to drop to near 50 by early morning.  As the day wears on we will have lots of sunshine but a light E wind will keep temperatures from warming too much as we should be in the mid 70s that afternoon which is actually pretty close to normal.  The normal max/min for this time of year is 75/54 to put things into perspective.

Then the clouds will be moving in Thursday night and overcast skies will prevail all day Friday.  The rains will start in W & SW OK that morning spreading on eastward during the day along with some embedded thunder.  Right now, this does not appear to be a significant severe weather maker for us as we should stay on the cool side of things as a nearly stationary boundary is expected to set up along the Red River during the day Friday.  That would keep the severe threat confined to far southern OK, but there is a remote possibility that the warmer, more unstable air could surge further northward during the day which would also spread the severe risk more our direction as well.

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It will be a close call and this next storm system is just now moving onshore along the W Coast.  As you can see on our forecast page, after the rains of Friday/Friday night, only a few lingering showers are expected for the morning hours of Saturday and most of the day should be dry.  Sunday is looking pretty good as well.  But, this system could produce another round of soaking rains, particularly for the more southern counties as shown on the 3 day QPF map valid through Saturday. I used the 3 day map as after that only some light, very scattered showers are anticipated for early next week. 

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 So, stay tuned and check back for updates. 

Dick Faurot