Drying Out Through the Weekend at Least.

Notice the 24 hour rainfall map, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, and it is obvious that much of our state has received a pretty good soaking over that time frame. Most of us have received at least an inch and in some cases much more than that. Good thing too as the rest of this week and quite likely much of the following week look to be dry. Notice the 7 day QPF map for example which has our state high and dry through that time period. Not only that, but if you look at the 8-14 day maps you will also notice that our precipitation chances during that time frame look to be in the slim to none category.

More about that 8-14 day time frame in a moment, will cover the rest of this week into the coming weekend first. The cold front that helped produce the widespread rains of today is really not all that cold and Wednesday will actually be the warmest day of this forecast cycle. The clouds will be slowly clearing out with some left over high level clouds to start the day Wednesday followed by lots of sunshine for the afternoon hours. Thursday and Friday will have lots of sunshine pretty much all day but temperatures will actually be cooler then.

After starting the day in the lower 40s, Wednesday afternoon should make it well into the 60s along with a light southerly wind. A re-enforcing surge of cooler air will arrive by early Thursday morning followed by a brisk northerly wind so that despite the sunshine, daytime highs will only be in the 50s after starting the day in the low 40s. Friday morning will likely see frost or a light freeze with morning lows in the 30s but a light E to SE wind and the sunshine should produce a nice rebound into the lower 60s.

Another surge of cooler air will arrive by early Saturday with brisk northerly winds and daytime highs only in the 50s again. Sunday morning will be quite chilly with low to mid 30s followed by afternoon highs near 60. Notice there is no mention of rain with any of these systems as the moisture source is pretty well cut off and they are moisture starved.

Temperatures will rebound again on Monday with highs in the low-mid 60s before another surge of colder air arrives during the day Tuesday. This is where things start to get interesting as the longer range guidance is not on the same page with this system. The European solution suggests easily the coldest air of the season headed our way with daytime highs struggling to even make it into the lower 40s whereas the GFS is much milder. The difference lies in the potential amplification of the flow aloft in the N Pacific due to the influence of W Pacific typhoon Nuri. A similar situation has occurred on a couple of other occasions already this fall, but there is always considerable uncertainty when dealing with this type of pattern.

Suspect the truth will lie somewhere in between the two extremes although the cooler side of the guidance will likely come closer to verifying. As mentioned earlier, notice the 8-14 day outlooks and you can see the real brunt of the colder air will be east of us but we still have a strong signal suggesting below normal temperatures on average during that time frame.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot