Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Turning Colder, Much Colder For The Weekend

What a day with afternoon temperatures well into the 60s across the state as you can see on the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. To put this into perspective, our normal daytime highs are in the upper 40s at this time of year, so today was 15 degrees or more warmer than normal.

Speaking of normal temperatures, notice the next graphic, which shows our normal daytime highs from where we are now until the heat of the summer; point is that we have turned the corner from a climatological standpoint and the trend is now upward until maxing out in the middle of the summer. Obviously, this does not mean we are not going to have any more cold weather - just that the overall trend will be upward albeit very slowly.

As you can see on our forecast page, after enjoying a couple of very pleasant days, it will be back to the real world with cooler temperatures on Friday and much cooler conditions for the weekend and into next week. A weak front will be arriving overnight tonight shifting our winds back to the NW by morning and a rather gusty NW wind will then prevail through the day Friday.

There is a slight chance of a few very light showers with the front itself but anything that does fall will not amount to much and will be east of the state by sunrise. That should leave us with plenty of afternoon sunshine to somewhat offset those gusty NW winds. As a result, temperatures to start the day will be above freezing and we should reach the upper 40s to near 50 during the afternoon which is still at or a bit above normal.

Not for long, though, as much colder air will be arriving by Saturday morning and below normal temperatures are expected to be the rule not only through the weekend but for much of next week as well.

Morning lows generally in the 20s and daytime highs in the 30s to lower 40s along with lots of cloud cover will certainly make it feel much more like winter again. Also, the wind flow aloft features winds primarily from the NW with some embedded disturbances which will be impacting the state in the days ahead.

This type of pattern can pull some surprises as, occasionally, one of those disturbances will suddenly strengthen. Right now, it looks like we will be between the major impacts with a chance of wintry weather mainly over the more SW counties of the state on Saturday and then further N or NE of us into Missouri along about Monday. That is not to say we will not have a chance of snow, but anything that does fall will be very light and primarily in the form of flurries if anything at all.

The 7-day QPF map is now showing a stronger precipitation signal for E OK over that time frame, but that is largely due to a stronger system that will be developing at the end of that 7 day period. That particular system may turn out to be a trouble maker, or it may be a dud; the longer range guidance is not very consistent from run to run nor from model to model so am not going to play it up too much at this time. Just be aware of the potential for a more significant storm system to be developing along about Thu/Fri of next week and we will see how subsequent data runs handle this system.

Keep in mind, it is currently way out in the Pacific Ocean, so lots of options are still open regarding its ultimate track/timing/intensity.

Looking further down the road, the 8-14-day outlooks continue to suggest a return to above normal temperatures on average during that time frame along with potentially a more unsettled, wetter pattern.

In case you are wondering, one of the possible explanations for this coming cold snap followed by a nice moderating trend toward the end of the month is a climatic signal called the Arctic Oscillation. It is currently very negative, which usually allows colder air to move further southward into the U.S, but it is expected to start trending back towards positive territory, which usually confines the colder air further north.

Just in case someone might be interested in some of the other climatic drivers that impact our weather since the El Nino has been getting most of the publicity but it is not the only game in town.

Anyway, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot