Sunny but Windy for Tuesday.

Notice the two rainfall maps, the first shows the rainfall over the last 24 hours and the rains are finally coming to an end. Fortunately, over that time frame the heaviest rains were NOT in NE OK as they received too much rain too fast late last week. A look at the rainfall over the last 4 days reveals those very heavy rains that occurred late last week and caused the flooding over those NE counties. At any rate, we have had a good soaking over the course of the last several days. Granted it was too much too fast for some and not enough for others, but given the fact that our next chance for rain is at least a week or more away, it should tide us over for a while.

The system responsible for the gusty northerly winds, rain, and cooler temperatures is moving rather slowly on to the NE taking the clouds and rain with it. That will result in the rain coming to an end from W-E during the evening and early nighttime hours followed by clearing skies from W-E towards morning. The very strong surface low together with a ridge of high pressure building in behind it are also responsible for the strong NW winds which will not calm down overnight. Look for those winds to continue in the 15-25 range through the overnight hours and at least that strong for much of the day Tuesday. As the sun goes down so will the winds for Tuesday evening and much lighter NW winds are then expected for Wed.

However, this will keep temperatures on the cool side with morning lows near 50 to start the day Tuesday and only in the upper 60s to near 70 that afternoon. Wednesday morning will be even cooler with lows in the lower 40s and possibly even some upper 30s in some of the cooler valleys. That afternoon will see daytime highs of at least 70 followed by a warmer day on Thursday.

Another weak frontal boundary will move across the state by early Friday but it will be moisture starved. However, a return to more northerly winds will knock a few degrees off our temperatures going into the coming weekend.

Some of the longer range guidance would suggest a good chance of rain again along about this coming Monday, but the lack of consistency and agreement leads me to only put in a slight chance and that may be a little generous. Bottom line is a much more settled weather pattern is expected to prevail not only through the coming weekend but quite possibly well into the following week as well.

So, stay tuned and enjoy this fine fall weather.

Dick Faurot