Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Another Round of Rain, Some Heavy

Hope you have enjoyed this nice little break in what is turning out to be a very wet month of May. As you can see by the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, after a very cool start to our day, temperatures stayed much cooler than normal through the afternoon as well. The normal max/min temperature for this date here in Tulsa is 79/58 and we were well below that again today.

One of the contributing factors was the high-level clouds that were optically thick enough to keep things a bit cooler. Also, the easterly winds we had through the day is usually a relatively cool wind for us and those two factors kept us from warming much this afternoon.

A stronger SE wind tonight along with mostly cloudy to overcast skies again by morning will result in a somewhat milder start, but it will still be cooler than normal with morning lows expected to generally be in the lower 50s. Wednesday will also be another relatively cool day, with cloudy skies all day long and a rather cool SE wind of 10-20 mph.

The clouds are in response to a disturbance aloft that will be moving over the state Wed night and spreading some showers, and perhaps some thunder ahead of it. This activity will be coming at us from the SW, so look for a few showers to be developing in the more SW counties by late morning or early afternoon and becoming more widespread as we get into the evening and overnight hours.

That activity will then be tapering off by Thursday morning as everything moves on eastward. We may even see a few breaks in the clouds later in the day, but there will still be a chance of a few showers or perhaps a storm or two redeveloping that afternoon or evening.

This has the potential to be a very wet system, as you can see on the first QPF map which shows the rainfall potential through the day Thursday. This could result in additional flooding problems and flood watches are in effect for portions of the state.

Gusty southerly winds will persist right on through the weekend so that our nights will be warmer and our days will be mostly cloudy, as you can see on our forecast page. Yet another, stronger storm system will then be impacting the state with increased chances of showers/storms beginning out west on Friday and then spreading more our direction for the Sat/Sun time frame. Locally heavy rains will also be possible with this activity as you can see on the second QPF map which shows the total rainfall potential over the next 7 days.

If this verifies, additional flooding problems may occur again before the weekend is over. Not only that, but the weekend storms will also have a greater threat of becoming severe.

That should be followed by another nice little break for the early part of next week, but not for long, as the longer range guidance suggests another unsettled period likely impacting the state again later in the week.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot