Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Summer Ends On A Warm Note

Rainfall totals over this past weekend were rather generous for some locations, but barely enough to settle the dust for others, as you can see on the rainfall map over the last 3 days, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. The 4+ inches at Oilton really stand out, but the far SE corner and also the NW and Panhandle sections largely missed out. Interestingly, over the course of the last 90 days, which the second map shows, the far SE corner has been extremely dry and that is normally the wettest part of the state over those dates.

As you can see on the 7-day QPF map, the prospects for any additional moisture will be hard to come by, as we will basically be high and dry through that time frame.

As has been mentioned on several previous occasions, from a climatological perspective, summer is considered to be the calendar months of Jun-Aug. However, using the dates on the calendar tomorrow is the last day of summer, as autumn will officially arrive at 3:22 a.m. Wednesday morning.  And, as you can see on our forecast page, it will end on an appropriately warm note with above normal temperatures to start the day and above normal temperatures to end the day.

By the way, the normal diurnal temperature range for Tulsa at this time of year is 82/60. By the end of the month, that will have dropped to 78/56 as our days get shorter and temperatures normally cool off rather quickly through the rest of the fall time period.

As previously mentioned, it looks like a dry forecast through the rest of this week and the coming weekend. Actually, cannot completely rule out an isolated shower or two, primarily over the more northern counties in the days ahead, but the chances of any one location receiving measurable rainfall will be too small to warrant a probability of precipitation on the forecast page.

So, that leaves the primary forecast challenge to be temperature and, as mentioned, we will be above normal in that regard for Tuesday. Again, referring to our forecast page, you can see temperatures will also be above normal for the rest of this week right on through the coming weekend.

Extending this on through the end of the month, temperatures are expected to average well above normal, along with drier than normal conditions as you can see on the 6-10-day outlook pages.

So, after what has been a warmer than normal summer, the fall season will also get off to a warmer than normal start.

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

Dick Faurot