Friday Morning Update

Friday, August 15th 2014, 4:39 am

By: Alan Crone

More typical August like weather will arrive today and this weekend, and should remain for several days next week. Afternoon highs today will move into the lower 90s with Saturday highs around 95 to 97. Temperature heat index values will be near or slightly above 100 this weekend but heat advisories are not anticipated for most of the area. A few showers or storms will be possible across the northern third of the state into southeastern Kansas. Most locations will remain dry, but a few spots will experience the storms. Any storms in the afternoon or late evening could produce strong winds. A few more severe storms may be possible across southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri this weekend.

The pattern hasn't change too much regarding the synoptic scale, but our surface winds have backed out of the southeast. This will increase our low level dew points and consequently, the afternoon humidity values will be increasing today and this weekend.

The main upper pattern across the nation supports a trough across the northeast, a mid level ridge near and west of the southern plains, and another trough across the Pacific Northwest. This mid-level ridge will slide southwest and a few weak disturbances will move on the top side of the ridge this weekend into early next week. These features will bring a few showers or storms into the northern third of the state and southeastern Kansas. A cold front at the surface will also move southward sometime this weekend. Various models have had various positions of the boundary through the weekend, but we have decided to keep our winds from the south for almost the entire period. This boundary could slide southward late Saturday night into Sunday morning for a few hours, but we'll keep it from the south.

Our storm chances will remain in the forecast for late tonight into pre-dawn Saturday, and then again Sunday morning and almost every day next week. But these pops (probability of precipitation) will remain near 20% or less at this point. I have debated some higher pops, but again, until we see a bigger southern push with the actual boundary, I'm inclined to keep the pops low.

Temperatures will remain above the seasonal average for the next few days with the highest temps occurring Saturday afternoon with the help of southwesterly surface winds. Morning lows will level off in the lower to mid-70s and highs next week should end up around 92 to 95 or so. RH values may crank those heat index values near 100 next week.

We " should" start seeing a gradual migration of the northern stream sometime during the next 3 to 4 weeks. This would bring some active weather back to the southern plains by early September, right on track for the run-up to fall! But the ensembles indicate a more robust mid-level ridge by the middle to end of next week. This could increase the temps late next week into next weekend. We still have plenty of summer to deal with before the arrival of fall.

The official Tulsa high yesterday was 91 recorded at 3:09pm. The normal average high is 94 and the low 72. Our daily records for today include a high of 109 from 1936 and a low of 53 from 1994.

Thanks for reading the Friday Morning Weather discussion and blog.

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Have a super great day!

Alan Crone

KOTV