Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Warming Trend, Unsettled Next Week

Certainly a nice run of weather we are enjoying with another beautiful day today.

Notice the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, which shows morning lows which were 5-10 degrees below normal and daytime highs which were a couple of degrees above normal. That happens when we have clear skies, light winds, and dry low levels to allow the nights to cool off, and then sunny skies along with light winds to allow the days to rebound nicely, which is what we had yesterday and again today.

Would you believe another beautiful day again on Friday as clear skies and light winds will once again allow for a cool start with overnight lows in the 40s to near 50 followed by lots of sunshine and afternoon highs back into the upper 70s.

After that, warmer and more humid conditions will return as gusty southerly winds will develop on Saturday continuing into the following week. Those winds will return lots of moisture resulting in more cloud cover, which will reduce the daytime warming to a certain extent, but will also result in much warmer night time temperatures.

We should stay dry through the weekend though, but that will be changing as we get into next week. The pattern aloft will become more favorable for the development of showers/storms and with abundant low level moisture available, next week looks to be very unsettled as you can see on our forecast page. The chances of showers/storms will be primarily west of us for the first of the week but gradually shifting more our way as the week wears on so the chances will also be increasing for the middle to latter part of the week.

Not only does next week look to be unsettled, but looking at the precipitation expected on the 6-10 day outlook also has a strong signal suggesting above normal chances of showers/storms. Looking further down the road at the 8-14 day outlooks, there is also a strong signal suggesting above normal chances of showers/storms. Given the time of year, that also implies the possibility of severe storms.

So far this year has been a relatively quiet one for severe weather with only 10 tornadoes - which is way below normal. However, do not draw any conclusions from that regarding the rest of the spring season as you can see from Travis Meyer's webcast regarding past spring seasons compared to where we are so far this year.

Speaking of the past, now that we have finished the month of April it turned out to be both warmer and wetter than normal. After a very cold February, March was a little warmer than normal, and now April comes in 2.3 degrees above normal. As mentioned yesterday, the outlook for the month of May is a weak signal suggesting slightly below normal temperatures.

Precipitation was slightly above normal, which has also kept us pretty close to normal for the year up to this point; quite a change from the drought of the last 5 years.

As mentioned above, it looks like May will be getting off to a very unsettled start after the weekend and for the first two weeks of the month. Also, as mentioned yesterday, the month as a whole was determined to be in the EC(Equal Chances) category meaning it could go either way as the signal was not definitive enough to make a categorical projection.

At any rate, next week is looking like it could get very interesting and that may well extend into the following week as well. So stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot