Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Records May Fall; High Fire Danger

Fortunately, the winds have not been as strong today, but there were still some southerly wind gusts above 20 mph, as you can see on the max wind map courtesy of the OK Mesonet. If you couple that with extremely warm temperatures, as the max/min temperature map shows and fire danger has been a concern once again.

That will be even more of an issue for Thursday, with much stronger winds and even warmer temperatures. Southerly winds of 10-20 overnight tonight will quickly increase after sunrise to 20-40 mph during the day with higher gusts possible, particularly for the more western counties.

With only some occasional high level clouds, that also means lots of sunshine and temperatures soaring to near record levels during the afternoon hours. Morning lows will be in the 40s to near 50 and the daytime highs well into the 70s to near 80.

By the way, the normal temperature range for this time of year in Tulsa is 54/32.

Those southerly winds will bring the dew points up into the 40-degree range, but the relative humidity will still drop to 30% or less during the heat of the day. That all adds up to a very high fire danger situation for Thursday.

Fortunately, the southerly winds will not be as strong on Friday and we will have more cloud cover, along with higher humidity levels for Friday through the coming weekend. That will mitigate the fire danger somewhat, but until we get some moisture, anytime the wind blows there will be fire danger concerns.

And, as you can see on our forecast page, our chances of receiving any significant moisture are rather slim and largely confined to the late Sunday/Sunday night time frame and primarily for the more SE counties at that. Notice the 7-day QPF map continues to show some decent moisture even further south into TX.

By the way, after threatening record high temperatures on Thursday, Friday morning will threaten the record for warmest overnight low and the afternoon highs for Fri/Sat will also be close to record territory. The extra cloud cover may make it tough to reach record levels, but it will be close.

A stronger cool front will finally arrive by early Sunday morning, but temperatures will still be relatively mild as the colder air will take a while to reach us. Also, the boundary will be rather slow to move through far SE OK which is why the better chance of rain/thunder will be over the far SE counties.

NE winds and cooler, more seasonal conditions will then prevail for the early part of next week. But, after that, the longer-range guidance continues to suggest temperatures will average above normal, along with a mostly inactive weather pattern as you can see on the 8-14-day outlooks.

However, as mentioned yesterday, there are some longer term climate drivers that still suggest we are not through with winter just yet, even though this early taste of spring may lead some to think so.

Dick Faurot