Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Warmer Wednesday, Cold Again Thursday

This has been a real roller coaster ride for the month of February as you can see on the first map. Even set a record daytime high temperature a couple of weekends ago, but since then winter has certainly re-established itself.

In fact, the month is now running more than 3-degrees below normal, and with below normal temperatures expected for the rest of the month, this will be the only month of the winter season (Dec-Feb) that will be cooler than normal. That's right, Dec was much warmer than normal and Jan was slightly warmer than normal.

Notice the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the Ok Mesonet, which shows the coldest conditions today were over the more southern counties. A couple of things contributed to that; one is the cloud cover that was more persistent along and south of I-40.

The other is shown on the nation-wide snow cover map which has more snow on the ground over the southern part of the state, and without the sunshine the rest of us received, that made it difficult to warm up much.

Where the sun did shine, it did a good job of getting rid of most of the snow today, but the fair skies and light winds overnight will still result in a cold start to Wednesday morning. Temperatures will range from the upper teens to the lower 20s, and since the winds will be nearly calm, there may even be some patchy fog in some of the valley locations.

Wednesday will be much like today in that clouds will be more prevalent over the far southern counties with lots of sunshine for the more northern counties.

Also, another system aloft will be moving eastward with the potential for some wintry weather for locations basically along the Red River and eastward. That will miss most of us, so the sunshine together with a light southerly wind should get afternoon temperatures into the upper 40s and perhaps even some low 50s.

That is still well below the 56 that is normal at this time of year.

Then, another strong cold front will arrive Wednesday night followed by gusty northerly winds and much colder conditions again for Thu/Fri. In fact, we may not get above freezing for those two days and wind chill values will likely be in the teens at times.

A series of disturbances aloft will also be impacting the state keeping us overcast and with the potential for some light flurries or a few brief snow showers. The exception would be for far W OK and far S OK during those two days where some measurable wintry precipitation may occur.

Again, this looks to be a relatively low impact event even for those locations.

After that, sunshine will still be hard to come by as we go through the weekend and into early next week.

At least our winds will be returning to a more SE direction for Sat/Sun which should moderate temperatures somewhat despite the lack of sunshine.

Also, more energy aloft will continue to move over the state keeping us cloudy and with at least a chance of precipitation. A wintry mix will also be possible during the morning hours when temperatures will be close to freezing with a cold rain otherwise, particularly on Sunday.

Another cold front is on tap to arrive by early Monday with a return to northerly winds.

We may finally get a break in the clouds and daily chance of precipitation along about Tue or Wed or next week, but as you can see from the 6-10 day outlook maps, that first week of March still looks to be colder than normal with chances of active weather.

It will warm up one of these days, but February will be ending on a cold note and the month of March will also be getting off to a cold start.

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

Dick Faurot