Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Cold Tonight, Moderating Temps Through Weekend

It was a chilly day today as you can see by the max/min temperature map across the state, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.

Gusty north winds made it feel even cooler, but those winds are subsiding for this evening and through the overnight hours. However, the winds have been rather strong at times as the maximum wind map for today also shows. Those winds have also brought some very dry air into the state, so as the winds calm down for the overnight hours - together with the clear skies - we will have, temperatures will quickly plummet. Morning lows in the teens to low 20s are expected to start the day Thursday.

Fortunately, the morning hours will have very light winds so the wind chill is not expected to be an issue. As the day wears on our winds will be more from the SW and will increase to 10-15mph by afternoon. Together with the sunny skies that should allow temperatures to quickly warm through the 40s to around 50 or so.

Gusty southerly winds on Friday will result in even warmer temperatures, both to start the day and for the afternoon hours as you can see on our forecast page. The main issue then will be the attendant fire danger as humidity levels will be rather low, the winds will be gusty, and temperatures will be warmer than normal.

A weak system will move through the area Friday night into the day Saturday with more cloud cover and perhaps even some light precipitation. What does fall will be very light, but given the timing it would most likely be in the form of light snow.

After that, look for another quick rebound and above normal temperatures should persist through Sunday. A stronger cold front will be arriving later Sunday, but the much colder air behind this system should be somewhat delayed. So, the weekend is looking promising, followed by colder conditions to start the first of next week. That will be followed by another nice rebound in temperatures by the middle of the week.

In fact, as the 8-14-day outlooks suggest, it appears that temperatures should average warmer than normal for that time frame along with a rather quiet weather pattern. Also, notice the 7-day QPF map which shows only very light precipitation over the next 7 days and it looks like that will be followed by a mostly dry signal for the following week.

By the way, the light precipitation the QPF map does suggest reflects the slight chance for the Friday night, Saturday morning time frame as mentioned above. Other than that, looks like pretty a stable pattern over the next week or two.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot