Read Alan Crone's Blog: Rain Forecast For This Weekend

Friday, November 21st 2014, 4:39 am

By: Alan Crone

Read Alan Crone's Blog: Rain Forecast For This Weekend

The first of two waves will be approaching the area this morning allowing for spotty showers and drizzle to develop across portions of Eastern OK this morning for a few hours with morning lows in the 40s. Daytime highs will reach the mid to upper 50s along with east to southeast winds at 10 to 15 mph. A few showers can't be ruled out later this afternoon and evening, but many locations will remain dry later this evening for a few hours before rain moves into southern OK. This will occur as a strong upper level system ejects across the southwestern U.S. and moves eastward.

Thunderstorms and rain will develop later this evening across central and north Texas. As the main upper level system ejects across the Rio Grande and moves eastward. Some severe weather will be likely across south-central and southern Texas, but well south of our area.   Showers with some thunder will spread northward out of Texas into southern OK early Saturday morning. Showers will spread rapidly northward into the northeastern third of the state Saturday and may become intermittent for most of the afternoon and early evening. Temps will remain in the upper 50s or lower 60s for the day. The main upper level trough will eject across the ArkLaTex region pre-dawn Sunday lifting slightly northeast allowing for some “wrap around" precipitation across eastern or northeastern OK for a few hours Sunday morning.   There is now some indication that some spotty wrap around precipitation may linger Sunday evening across far northeastern OK before shifting away from the state.

Late Sunday afternoon a surface boundary will move across northern OK bringing gusty north winds and eventually drier and cooler air back to the state for early next week. The initial surge of air appears to be a Pacific-Canadian mix and will not be exceptionally cold. The second surge arriving Monday night into Tuesday morning may have some cooler air draining into the northeastern third of the state, and this may allow morning lows in the 20s followed by Tuesday afternoon highs in the upper 40s near 50 Tuesday.

The rest of the Thanksgiving Holiday forecast remains highly uncertain. The GFS and EURO are totally out of phase with some major features. Both sets of data have not been exceptionally good with run to run consistency, and of course, they both differ greatly when compared to each other.   One item of interest is the GFS vs EURO ensemble vs operational comparison.   When looking at the ensemble comparison, both the GFS and EURO do offer some resemblance of the same outcome and would keep the area dry and cool.   It's only the EURO operational that supports the true arctic intrusion and some wintry precip.    What will we do regarding this part of the extended forecast? Thankfully, we're many days out from this time and have plenty of opportunity to discover the correct solution for the end of next week. We'll not make any major changes from a day to day stand-point, and keep the Holiday period relatively mild and only with very low chances of precipitation.    We'll make slow and steady changes, if needed at all, regarding Thanksgiving.