Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: At Least It's Not A Repeat Of 80 Years Ago

Notice the first image, courtesy of the weather service office in Amarillo, Tx. Today happens to be the 80th anniversary of what came to be known as “Black Sunday” for much of the high plains including much of Oklahoma.

The photo shows the worst dust storm to occur during the drought years of the 1930s. For more photos of that historic event, go to the newson6.com. For more detailed information, I suggest clicking on this link.

We have been in another prolonged drought situation over the last 5 years across much of the state, but least the recent rains are coming at a good time.

Notice the rainfall map for today, which is not particularly impressive, but at least we did pick up some more badly needed moisture. The rain fall totals of the last 3 days are more impressive, which is the next map; both of which are courtesy of the OK Mesonet.

The moisture and cloud cover has also had an impact on temperatures as you can see on the max/min map.

The system responsible for the rains of the last 3 days is finally moving on out and should provide us with a break for much of Wednesday, and perhaps much of Thursday as well, before the next storm system comes our way. Any lingering light rain or showers tonight should be ending by early morning and moving on eastward, followed by a good bit of afternoon sunshine.

Been awhile since we have seen much sun and Thursday morning should start off with some sunshine as well before more cloud cover returns later in the day.

Since Wednesday, and much of Thursday, look to be between systems, the extra sunshine should push our daytime highs into the lower 70s on Wednesday and well into the 70s on Thursday.

The next storm system looks to be a very strong one, but will be moving rather slowly and somewhat erratically this way heading into the weekend. Although most of the day Thursday looks to be dry for us, the attention will be shifting back to the west where storms will likely develop late in the day and may make a run at us that night.

After that, showers and storms look to be rather widespread for the Fri/Sat time frame which together with the associated cloud cover will hold temperatures down to near 70 during the day.

Sunday is questionable as one of the longer range guidance products dries us out during the day and another keeps us wet for one more day. The GFS is the faster solution and is typically too fast in situations such as this so will trend somewhat more toward the Euro solution and keep at least a slight chance of shower/storms in the forecast through Sunday.

However, by early next week it looks like we will be on the backside of the system with northerly winds, mostly sunny skies, and relatively mild temperatures as you can see on our forecast page.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot