Storm System Nearing Soon

Thursday, October 9th 2014, 4:36 am

By: Alan Crone

We're getting ready to move into an active weather pattern with increasing rain and thunderstorm chances across the state. Some pockets of moderate to heavy rainfall will be possible Friday and then again Sunday night into Monday. The severe weather threat, while not very high, is not zero and would be confined to the southern third of the state Friday afternoon. Temps will remain warm today but will cool Friday into the upper 60s with Saturday afternoon highs in the lower 60s.

The upper air flow has slowly transitioned across the state to more of a zonal or west to east flow. The main northwest flow has shifted eastward. The left-over Simon system has merged and become absorbed into another wave that is moving across the four corners area today.   A weak stationary boundary located across Kansas will slowly move southward later tonight into Friday. All of these features will combine to produce some shower and thunderstorm activity across the state. The exact timing of the system may still throw us a curve ball or two, but we'll lean toward the starting point of Friday morning for most of northern OK and not exiting far eastern OK until Saturday midday. Friday night football games may be impacted by spotty rain across northern OK and some rain with embedded thunderstorms across the southern sections.

The exact model output ( QPF) has changed some in the data with certain runs remaining very robust with precipitation output and other runs not as aggressive.

Model output blends and magic fuzzy math by me will result in amounts nearing 1 to 1.5 inches Friday afternoon in some locations. I tend to discount some of the more aggressive outputs and keep most locations around .75 to an inch to 1.5 for northern OK with some higher amounts southeast.

This system (the first one) should exit the area Saturday morning to midday with north winds and cool air remaining. Folks in Big D may experience some rain Saturday for the OU-TX game before the system moves eastward by midday to early afternoon. Temps will remain cool in Dallas with highs in the 50s and 60s.

We should get a respite Saturday night into most of Sunday across eastern OK as another upper level wave rapidly drops into the region by the afternoon and evening hours. Surface pressures will drop in response to the approaching system and southeast winds will rapidly transport moisture back across eastern OK. A heavy rainfall event will be possible Sunday night into Monday morning, more so along and east of highway 69-75 with the system exiting the state by midday Monday.    After the Sunday evening-Monday morning system clears the state, we'll be in good shape for a few days with seasonal temps for the remainder of the week.

Thanks for reading the Thursday Morning weather discussion and blog

Have a super great day!

Alan Crone

KOTV