Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Above Normal Temperatures To Continue

After another chilly start to our day, the abundant sunshine with a light southerly wind warmed things up rather nicely this afternoon, as you can see on the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. Keep in mind that morning lows near freezing and daytime highs in the low 50s are considered to be the norm at this time of year.

The second map shows the dew point temperature as of late this afternoon across the state, again, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. The reason I am showing that is those numbers are about 10 degrees or so higher than at the same time yesterday. The dew point temperature is the temperature of saturation, and since the air temperature cannot go below the dew point, then it often can provide a reasonable estimate of what our overnight low will be.

In this case, there will likely be some deposition take place with the clear overnight skies, so the dew point will likely drop off a few degrees from those values. But, a light southerly wind will also persist overnight and the combination is expected to keep us from being as cold as the last few mornings have been as you can see on our forecast page.

In fact, a general warming trend will be the general rule for much of this forecast cycle as temperatures will be above normal both at night as well as during the day. Southerly breezes and lots of sunshine should bring daytime highs to near 60 for Saturday, a weak front will arrive by early Sunday morning shifting our winds back to the NW, but temperatures will still be warmer than normal. Also, some morning cloud cover will give way to afternoon sunshine during the day Sunday.

A few sprinkles may also get wrung out by this system as it has good upper level support, but it is moisture starved so nothing more than some sprinkles or a light shower is expected.

Southerly winds quickly return on Monday and will be the general rule through the end of the coming week. Another weak boundary may make a run at us on Wednesday, but right now it looks like it will hang up just to our north and will not have any active weather associated with it anyway. That means the latter part of the week will see very mild temperatures for this time of year.

That following weekend is more uncertain, though, as the longer range guidance is not very consistent. As a result, the ensemble solutions look more realistic and reliable than the operational solutions, so trended the forecast in that direction.

That should keep us with some very mild weather for the middle of December into the end of next week followed by at least a chance of rain that Saturday and cooler conditions starting on Sunday. However, there still does not appear to be an arctic connection with the fronts coming our way as the more zonal flow aloft is bringing primarily Pacific type systems our way.

That is evident on the 8-14-day outlooks which continue to suggest above normal temperatures, on average, for that time frame and above normal chances of rainfall.

Eventually we will get some of that really cold air down this way, so, in the meantime, enjoy these mild conditions and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot