Alan Crone's Weather Blog: Tracking Thanksgiving Holiday Rainstorm

A wet Thanksgiving will be followed by a wet and chilly Saturday.   Highs today should continue into the lower and mid-60s before our weather pattern slides downhill.    A strong cold front will roll into the area Thursday afternoon bringing cold air back to the Sooner state persisting through the weekend.   Any chance of freezing rain should be confined to part of northwestern OK Saturday morning.  

Our weather yesterday was gorgeous with sunshine and afternoon highs in the mid-60s.   Today’s temperatures will remain mild with upper 30s and lower 40s this morning and lower 60s this afternoon.   There will be some noticeable differences today compared to yesterday as strong south winds begin to develop in response to the deepening surface pressure across the Rockies.   Cloud cover will be increasing by midday to afternoon and evening and some spotty showers or drizzle seems possible early Wednesday as low level moisture streams across the Texas region into Oklahoma.   Our forecast will continue to keep relatively low chances for showers and drizzle later tonight through the first half of Wednesday.

Thanksgiving Day a strong upper level system will be positioned to our northwest with a lead impulse moving across the southern and central plains.   A surface area of low pressure will develop across the high plains of Texas and slide southward.   Pockets of moderate to heavy rainfall will develop near and behind the front Thursday midday through afternoon beginning from southwestern OK into the northeastern part of the state by midday.   This entire area of precipitation will move southward by afternoon and evening.   No severe weather will occur but some thunder will be possible with the system.   The forecast model available water values are very high relative to late November and this should result in pockets of moderate to heavy rainfall with some minor flooding concerns across southeastern OK.   Rainfall amounts from 1 to 3 inches will be possible across eastern OK with some locally heavier totals from 3 to 5 inches across the Red River Valley of the southeastern quadrant of the state.  

The surface cold front representing a shallow modified arctic air-mass will move southward Thursday evening into Friday morning.   Temperatures will drop considerably from the 60s into the lower 40s Friday morning, and should remain in the lower 40s for Friday midday to afternoon along with gusty north winds at 15 to 25 mph.   Rain will end Friday morning to midday as the rain advances from southeastern OK into northeastern Texas.   We should get a break from Friday midday to afternoon but light rain may quick arrive by Friday evening from the southwest.

A second impulse will arrive late Friday into Saturday with light rain overrunning the state.   Cold shallow air (cold at the surface and warmer aloft) will be present with Saturday morning lows in the upper 30s and highs in the lower 40s.   A chilly rain is likely for most of the day Saturday before ending from the northwest to southeast by late afternoon or evening.    Temperatures across the northwestern OK region may be cold enough ( at or below freezing) for some light freezing rain for a small period Saturday morning.   Almost all data this morning continue to keep the northeastern and eastern OK region above freezing this weekend with the precipitation over the area through Sunday morning.   I continue to stress the forecasting problems associated with shallow air-masses.   On occasion, the air-mass is stronger (colder and deeper) than modeled and can travel more south and east than depicted by models.   Usually this happens in January and early February.   At this point, the only model data with a noticeably colder and deeper air mass is the GEM or Canadian model, which is considerably colder and would result in freezing rain across a large part of the central and western sections of the state.   Since this data is the outlier of the solutions, we have ignored the model for this system. 

Thanks for reading the Tuesday morning weather discussion and blog.

Have a super great day!

Alan Crone

KOTV