Alan Crone's Weather Blog: Rain Moving Into Oklahoma

Our main storm system is located across the Eastern New Mexico and Western Texas area this morning and is moving northeast.  Rain with embedded thunderstorm activity is underway across the western half of the state this morning where flood watches are posted into central OK.   Pockets of rainfall will migrate eastward later today and tonight with increasing rain chances for eastern OK by this evening.   Severe weather is not expected for most of the area but a few strong storms may still occur across southern OK and north TX.   Daytime highs will move into the upper 70s and lower 80s today with increasing clouds throughout the day.   Southeast winds at 10 to 15 mph will likely along with gusts nearing 20 and 25 mph.   A cold front will move across the area Saturday morning bringing north winds and cooler air for the weekend.   Overrunning moisture across eastern and southern OK will remain Saturday with rain chances continuing through part early Saturday morning.  

WARN Interactive Radar

Low level moisture continues to slowly increase across the region with dew point temperatures moving into the upper 50s and lower 60s.   South winds will continue to pump copious amounts of moisture into part of the state helping to generate the rain and storms today and tomorrow.   Flood watches may be required for part of southern or far east-central Ok later tonight into part of the weekend, but the threat of flooding rains across northeastern OK will remain rather low.   Model data has been consistently keeping the higher accumulation totals across the central and southern sections of the state during the Friday time period.   Heavy rainfall is underway this morning across western OK where flood watches remain underway.

Flash Flood Watch list

The timing of this evening’s on-set of rainfall is a little tricky but we think most of the rain will hold to our west until this evening.   A few of the models do bring some pops into the metro around 5pm, but we’ll keep the mentions beginning around 7pm to 9pm tonight.   That’s where the leading edge of shower and storm activity will enter the area.   This rainfall may continue through early Friday morning before “thinning out” by late morning.   This means Friday Night football games may have a window for no falling precipitation.   We anticipate additional rain developing Friday late into Saturday morning across as a cold front approaches northern OK.   This rain would expand along the boundary during the Saturday morning to midday period but is not expected to linger too long Saturday morning.

The rest of the weekend should feature a slight chance of showers Sunday, but additional rain is possible Tuesday as a south TX surface low moves east and northeast near the region.   The higher chances may end up across eastern TX into western Arkansas, but we’ll keep some pops for the Tuesday time period.  

The weather pattern should support a cold air intrusion late next week across the nation.   It’s too early to pin point how this may impact eastern OK.   Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading the Thursday morning weather discussion and blog.

Have a super great day!

Alan Crone
KOTV