Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Another Shot Of Cold Air, But Not For Long

As you can see from the first map from late this afternoon, the cold air is moving in quickly as shown in the 3 hour temperature changes, courtesy of the OK Mesonet.

Not only that, but the strong northerly winds behind the cold front, as seen on the second map, are producing some mighty cold wind chill values as seen on the third map; all in all, quite a departure from just 24 hours ago as seen on the 4th map.

By the way, we are very blessed here in OK to have the OK Mesonet which can document all those rapid weather changes in a way that other states can only envy or are only recently starting to catch up to.

Along with the colder air and the cloudy skies for the evening/overnight hours comes a slight chance of some wintry precipitation. Light snow/freezing drizzle or some brief flurries will be possible overnight with potentially some accumulation on grassy surfaces, particularly for the more NE counties.

Again, this does not appear to be a high impact event as the system will be moving on by very quickly.

The cold high pressure ridge responsible for these changes will be settling over us tonight and Thursday, then quickly moving on eastward as we head into the weekend.

The result will be a very cold Thursday with morning lows in the teens and daytime highs in the 30s to near 40. Also, northerly winds of 10-15 mph along with temperatures in the teens could result in wind chill values in the single digits to start the day.

By afternoon, those winds will be returning to a more southerly direction and will be much lighter at only 5-10 mph. We will also have lots of sunshine for the afternoon hours.

Southerly breezes will make for a milder start to Friday with morning lows in the 20s, but after that comes a big time warm-up. By that afternoon, sunny skies together with gusty southerly winds should push us well into the 60s, but the relative humidity will also be dropping to around 30% or so creating a high fire danger.

The weekend looks to be even warmer with no major cold fronts coming back our way, even going into next week. The only concern is the potential for some low level stratus clouds which would impact the daytime temperatures.

Even so, it looks to be quite mild with lows in the 40s and highs possibly reaching the lower 70s assuming those low level clouds thin out during the day.

A weak boundary on Sunday will knock daytime temperatures back into the 60s going into early next week, but no major changes or any additional chances of precipitation are currently on the horizon.

So, the big cool-down we are experiencing this afternoon will be rather short-lived with a cold Thursday followed by much above normal temperatures for the weekend and well into next week, if not beyond.

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

Dick Faurot