Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Warm, Windy Wednesday; Cold, Wet By Saturday

Today was another beautiful day across our state, particularly considering the time of year.

Notice the max/min temperature map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, and once again many records were set - mainly for the western half of the state. In fact, this has been a record setting day across much of the rest of the country as well, with record high temperatures established from Montana to the Gulf Coast.

At the same time, a record setting blizzard is impacting the New England states; this is turning out to be a very unusual winter and it still has a long ways to go.

Back to our weather though, which will see one more day with extremely warm conditions - although it looks like it will be short of setting records here on our side of the state.

For Tulsa today, we were two degrees shy of tying the record daytime high this afternoon and the record for tomorrow is 82. The current forecast has us well short of those numbers, but mid-upper 70s are still not too shabby for late January.

However, the minimum relative humidity will be dropping to near 30%, we will have bright sunny skies, and southerly winds up to 25 or 30 mph at times. That adds up to a volatile fire danger situation for Wednesday.

A dry cool front will arrive Wednesday night followed by gusty northerly winds for Thursday and much cooler conditions. Despite the cooler weather, fire danger will still be a concern due to northerly winds of 20 mph or more at times.

Temperatures will be in the 40s tonight and again to start the day Thursday, but the gusty northerly winds will hold us to the low 50s for Thursday afternoon.

Friday will be cooler yet with morning lows below freezing and generally in the 40s that afternoon. We will also have increasing cloud cover as a storm system, now moving across SoCal, will be moving across the state by then and that is when things start to get a little more interesting.

However, all the latest and greatest guidance continues to support above freezing temperatures by the time the precipitation starts early Saturday morning with a cold, wet Saturday. The rain should be widespread as you can see from the 7 day QPF map which has also upped the rainfall totals from this system.

Half an inch or more looks to be pretty common across much of the state with the more southern counties having the potential for an inch or more. We will also have a short thermometer with morning lows above freezing but daytime highs only in the low 40s at best along with southerly winds.

On the backside of this system is where there will be some wintry weather potential by early Sunday morning as colder air at the surface and aloft spreads back southward on the heels of brisk northerly winds. But, the moisture will be moving out at the same time which should provide a limit to any winter weather.

Also, the exact track of the upper level system and its surface reflection will determine where and how much wintry weather may occur and right now the longer range guidance remains inconsistent in that regard.

So, until the guidance becomes more definitive, we'll only call for a slight chance for some wintry precipitation for late Saturday night into the day Sunday.

One thing that is for certain is that it will be cold with temperatures likely remaining in the 30s all day Sunday and a gusty northerly wind to make it feel even colder.

Monday will also be cold but temperatures will start to rebound by Tuesday.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot.