Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Sunny, Warm Through The Weekend

December 26th, that was the last day in which the temperature made it above the 50 degree mark for a daytime high. In fact, we made it to 61 that day and the warmest temperature since then was 47 degrees on Dec 29th.

That is until today when we finally got a break as you can see from the statewide max/min temperature map courtesy of the OK Mesonet.

The abundant sunshine today together with a light westerly wind component contributed to those above normal temperature readings and that pattern will persist for several more days.

Speaking of sunshine, the last time we had a day with no clouds in the sky at all throughout the daytime hours was all the way back to Nov 18. We may just do that again on Friday as lots of sunshine will be the general rule, not only for Friday but right on through the weekend and into early next week.

What few clouds we do see will be of the mid-high level variety, so certainly no threat of any precipitation anytime soon either.

Notice the 5 day QPF map for example which has us high and dry through that time period.

A light S to SW wind component on Friday and southerly winds of 8-15 for most of the day Saturday together with the abundant sunshine will push our daytime highs to around the 60 degree mark both days.

A weak cool front will arrive Saturday evening shifting the winds back to the NW to start the day Sunday, but this is a weak system and a quick return to southerly winds is expected by that afternoon.

Southerly winds will continue into the day Monday but a stronger cold front will be arriving late in the day and northerly winds will prevail for the next several days after that.

This will start a cooling trend with highs in the 50s Tuesday and the 40s for Wed/Thu.

Beyond that time frame, the new 8-14 day outlooks now paint a below normal temperature signal for just about everywhere east of the Rockies but not much in the way of precipitation; at least not in our neck of the woods.

That is unfortunate as the latest National Drought Monitor shows drought is becoming more of a problem across the state and our more western counties in particular could certainly use some moisture.

Although there will be some potentially wet systems coming our way later next week, right now the prospects of anything that would put much of a dent in the expanding drought are not very promising.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot.