Dick Faurot's Weather Blog: Cold Wet Start To The Weekend, Sunshine Returns Sunday

The dreary weather continues, but at least temperatures have moderated above freezing during the day and are expected to remain that way through the night tonight, at least for our side of the state.

Notice the maximum temperature map as of mid-afternoon, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, and you can see it is cold but at least above freezing. Good thing too as widespread rain, showers, mist, drizzle, fog, etc., will persist through the night and into the morning hours of Saturday, so wet roads can be expected but not icy roads; at least no ice for our side of the state.

Another contributing factor is the soil temperatures, which are well above freezing as you can see from the soil temperature map, also courtesy of the OK Mesonet.

The main storm system will be passing over the state during the day Saturday and on eastward by Saturday night. That should push most of the rain on east of us by Saturday morning, but we will likely be left with low clouds and possibly some drizzle or a light mist through the middle of the day. This still looks to be a very wet system as the QPF map suggests up to an inch for some locations will be possible.

Then, as the colder air aloft associated with the main storm center passes overhead, there will be a chance of snow or a wintry mix, primarily for the more northern counties, late Saturday and into the overnight hours. That will be quickly coming to an end, but accumulating snows appear likely on up into Kansas as you can see by the accompanying snow map.

Our winds will be light and variable for much of the night tonight then more S/SW during much of the day Saturday, so temperatures are expected to moderate further and should be near 40 that afternoon, if not warmer.

As the main storm center passes on eastward, gusty NW winds will follow for Saturday night and Sunday, and with snow on the ground just north of us, it will be a very cold day.

We will stay below freezing all day but at least the morning clouds will be replaced by lots of afternoon sunshine, so we have that to look forward to.

After that, much of the following week just looks cold as you can see on our extended forecast page.

Another shot of cold air looks to be arriving along about late Tuesday into Wednesday, but that should be a dry system.

Beyond that time frame, the longer range guidance suggests temperatures will at least be averaging closer to normal as you can see from the 8-14 day outlook. Precipitation also looks to be trending toward a wet signal so we will see how that pans out.

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

Dick Faurot