Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Sunshine Returns With Warmer Temperatures

The persistent cloud cover today certainly held temperatures down, as you can see on the max/min temperature map across the state, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. The exception was the far SE counties which had more sunshine. Even though it looked like it could rain at any time, any measurable rainfall was pretty well confined to the western half of the state. Notice the precipitation totals over the course of the weekend and the more western counties did get some decent rains and some locations a pretty good soaking.

The days ahead will see a significant warm-up, again dependent on cloud cover, but also as a result of a return to southerly winds. A light N to NE wind will continue through tonight and into the day Tuesday, but the winds will become more southerly for Wednesday and Thursday ahead of the next cool front that now looks to be arriving Thursday night.

Those persistent clouds should be thinning out by Tuesday morning with lots more sunshine by afternoon. That should bring our daytime highs back into the upper 70s, if not 80, again dependent on how quickly those clouds clear out. Also, the light winds and lingering overnight cloud cover should result in morning lows in the mid-upper 50s, which is certainly milder than the 40s we experienced over the weekend.

As you can see on our forecast page, Wednesday and Thursday will be even warmer yet, as southerly winds together with more sunshine should get us back into the lower 80s by then. The cool front that now looks to be moving across the state Thursday night will bring at least the possibility of rain, but the chances of any one location receiving measurable rainfall is very low.

This particular system looks to be moisture starved, and with most of the forcing focused somewhere else, that all adds up to a low probability of precipitation (PoP). As you can see on the 7-day QPF map, anything that does fall would be on the light side. The most likely time frame would be late in the day Thursday and ending during the morning hours of Friday.

This front will bring a short-lived cool down for the Fri/Sat time frame, but that will be quickly followed by a significant warmup for the latter part of the weekend and into the early part of next week. In fact, some locations across the state may well see some 90 degree temperatures during that time frame.

Lots of sunshine, a return to a S or SW surface wind, and ridging aloft all add up to much above normal temperatures. Not only then, but looking further ahead at the 8-14-day outlooks shows a strong signal suggesting continued above normal temperatures and below normal chances of precipitation.

In the meantime, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot