Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Tracking Our Next Chance For Showers

It took a while, but the sun finally came out giving us a very pleasant day today.

Notice the max/min temperatures for today, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. Now that the rains have moved on eastward, the rainfall totals across the state over this most recent event are also shown. As you can see, the amounts dropped off rapidly to the N and NW with only the far SE corner of OK catching some good totals.

I mention that because the chances of additional moisture for those drier areas are pretty much in the slim to none category over the next week or so. There is another chance of showers coming up later this week for the more eastern counties, but as you can see on the 7 day QPF map, that will not amount to much and the more western counties will be pretty much high and dry - more about that system in a moment.

First, let's relish the sunshine while we can.

Clear skies for tonight, along with light and variable winds and abundant residual low level moisture, should produce patchy areas of fog, particularly in the valleys to start the day Wednesday. Any fog that does form is then expected to burn off rapidly with abundant sunshine for the rest of the day.

Our winds will be light and variable first thing in the morning, then a light NE wind for the rest of the day. The light winds together with the sunny skies will make for a very pleasant day and afternoon temperatures should reach the low-mid 70s.

Thursday and Friday will see clouds returning and we will keep a northerly wind component. That will also be our next chance of rain or showers as another relatively weak system aloft will be moving eastward.

Most of the rain with that will be over the more eastern counties, but there will be at least a small chance over the entire eastern half of the state. Unfortunately, the more western counties will likely miss out on this system once again.

Also, the clouds and occasional showers will knock temperatures back into the 60s during the day for both Thu & Fri with overnight lows in the 40s. That system will be slowly moving on eastward going into the weekend so we now expect some lingering cloud cover into the day Saturday but it should be dry.

However, with brisk northerly winds and the clouds, Saturday will only be in the low-mid 60s - that is still close to if not a bit above normal for this time of year.

Sunday and Monday now look to be very pleasant with mostly sunny skies returning and, together with our winds returning to a more southerly component, they should also be warmer as you can see on our forecast page.

Tuesday will see stronger northerly winds behind a stronger cold front that will be arriving by early that morning so the rest of next week will see a more significant cool-down.

In fact, notice the 8-14 day outlooks, which clearly suggest a return to cooler conditions during that time frame along with additional chances of moisture. Hard to say at this point just how cold that will be but keep in mind that our normal last freeze date for the Spring is in the last few days of March so don't be surprised if we have at least one more good cool-down before Spring is fully underway.

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

Dick Faurot