Chance Showers Saturday, Sunny Sunday, Unsettled Next Week.

As the first map on the right shows, temperatures were at or close to freezing for many locations early this morning.  Keep in mind our normal first freeze date is early November and we have not had an ‘official' freeze here in Tulsa as yet.  Even so, these temperatures are much cooler than normal, not only with respect to the morning lows but our daytime highs have also been much cooler than normal recently.  In fact, after the very warm start to the month, the cool conditions of the past two weeks now has the average for the month more than 1 degree below normal.

We are also much below normal for our annual rainfall total, but have the potential for some additional rains over this forecast cycle.  In fact, an upper level disturbance will bring cloudy skies for us by this evening and through the night tonight followed by a chance of rain or showers on Saturday.  The better chances will be in the more central and southern counties with lesser chances further north.  Precipitation totals are expected to be on the light side, but notice the second map on the right which is the 7 day QPF map.  That largely reflects the unsettled period during the middle of next week when showers/storms will be more widespread and should result in an inch or more for many locations the way things are looking now.

Having said that, there is still a lot of uncertainty regarding the timing/strength/location of the main storm center for next week.  As mentioned yesterday, the system that will be responsible for the unsettled period is still out in the Pacific Ocean and will not be properly sampled by our observational network until it moves inland over the course of the coming weekend.  In the meantime, I am using a rather broad brush approach to our rainfall chances as the different forecast solutions we are dealing with are widely divergent.  For example, the operational GFS suggests the system should have cleared out by Halloween with the best chance of rain on Wednesday.  In contrast, the operational ECMWF keeps us cloudy and wet through Halloween.  Quite frankly, am leaning toward the slower solution offered by the ECMWF as the trends seem to be pointing that way.  No matter which one is correct though, look for Mon-Wed at the very least to be warm and windy with a good chance of showers/storms particularly for the Tue/Wed time frame and quite possibly into Halloween itself.

For the Friday night football games, it will be dry although mostly cloudy skies are expected.    S to SE winds near 10 mph and temperatures around 50 will also make it rather cool, but temperatures will basically hold steady for the rest of the night.  Cloudy skies and southerly breezes should keep the lows
Saturday morning around 50 and despite the clouds, daytime highs will be well into the 60s.  The latter half of the weekend looks pleasant as the Saturday system will have moved out leaving us with sunny skies and relatively light winds.  Morning lows will be quite cool again with temperatures dropping into the 30s to near 40, but afternoon temperatures should make it well into the 60s. 

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot