Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Warmer Weekend, Slight Chance Of Rain

Notice the max/min temperature map across the state today, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. This has been one of the few days during the month of December that has been cooler than normal. In fact, the first two days of the month - together with yesterday and today - have been the only cooler than normal days here in Tulsa all month long. By the way, 48/29 is the normal max/min temperature for Tulsa at this time of year, and, as you can see on our forecast page, we will be much warmer than that throughout the upcoming forecast cycle.

For tonight, a light southerly breeze will somewhat offset the clear skies and cool air in place, so temperatures will drop to at or below the freezing mark to start the day Saturday, but at least not as cold as it was this morning. Then, lots of sunshine and a brisk southerly wind will push daytime temperatures to 10 degrees or so warmer than we were today.

Sunday will be even warmer yet, but cloudy skies for much of the day will hamper the daytime warm-up, somewhat. Those clouds will be in advance of a weak boundary that will be moving across the state Sunday night and, although it does not have much to work with, this system could produce some light rain showers or drizzle for the Sunday afternoon through the overnight time frame. Anything that does fall will be very light and primarily for about the eastern third of the state.

A light north wind on Monday will knock temperatures back, somewhat, but we will still be warmer than normal.

Another weak system arriving along about Wednesday will be dry and will not impact temperatures much, but will have a weak wind shift associated with it. Stronger southerly winds are expected by Christmas Day going into that following weekend. Those southerly winds will return more moisture resulting in more cloud cover and perhaps some light showers by late Christmas Day or that night.

Right now, the longer range guidance is suggesting a potent storm system impacting the state for the weekend following Christmas. Social media has already been pouncing on this particular system with some wild statements regarding what we will be in store for. Keep in mind that timeframe is dependent on systems that are currently well out in the Pacific Ocean and, therefore, not very well sampled by the observational network.

This often leads to some wild swings regarding model output at those longer time ranges and, therefore, little confidence in any one particular solution. Having said that, there has been some decent continuity recently from the longer range output suggesting a very wet Saturday and possibly a cold & wet Sunday - not going to get too excited about those possibilities till we have several more model runs under our belt to sort out the day to day variations in solutions.

In fact, as you can see on the 6 -10-day outlooks, temperatures are still expected to average above normal during that time frame although it also suggests wetter than normal conditions.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot