Wednesday Morning Update

Good Morning.  

First up:  Thanks to Mike Grogan for filling in for me during the morning hours for the past few days.  I had some vacation days to burn before the end of the year and Mike handled the morning hours. It's not easy to get up at 2AM and work the morning shift for a few days when you're not acclimated to the hours.  Thanks Mike! 

 Very cold temperatures are in place across our area of interest (NE/Eastern OK-SE Kansas-NW Ark) and we're looking for highs today around 30 to 34 degrees.  North winds will continue to blow this morning in the 10 to 20 mph range before decreasing speeds later this afternoon and evening.  This will create very wind chill values this morning through the early afternoon time period. The clouds have cleared across most of the area and we'll expect mostly sunny conditions for most of the area.  Later today increasing clouds will be the call across western OK and we'll see mostly cloudy and cold conditions tonight through Wednesday.  No precipitation is expected in the short term.   

Thursday night into Friday morning another fast moving wave will slide across the southern plains and a surface cold front will cross the area around Thursday night or Friday morning.  There will continue to be a chance of some light snow or sleet Friday morning through early afternoon across NE OK into NW Ark with highs in the 30s along with north winds, but the chance of measurable precipitation will remain low.  

The weekend appears good with mostly clear sky and cool temps.  Morning lows in the upper teens to lower 20s will be followed by highs in the upper 30s Saturday near the mid to upper 40s Sunday. 

We may also see another system approaching our area around the New Year Holiday time period but we're so far out from the time domain the data will more than likely flip numerous times. The GFS brings the next upper level wave progressively across the area Monday while the EURO holds the mid-level low back across the far southwestern part of the nation until late next week.  My choice will be to keep a slight chance of precip in the forecast for Monday with temps in the mid-40s.   

Now to the departing storm system:

Obviously the snow never was able to make it to the surface from Tulsa north, but did hit the areas along I-40 to the southeast with snowfall reports.  Last Tuesday and Wednesday the system was still well off the west coast and wasn't able to sampled by the upper air observation system correctly.  It was not until the weekend that we got a decent look at the system, which indicated a decent shot of snow near Tulsa southward.  By Sunday night the system ( in some of the model data) began showing us signs of a slight jog southward of the main upper level low and consequently the surface area of low pressure.  But other data continued to keep some decent amounts near central OK near the OKC to Tulsa corridor.  By Christmas Eve afternoon into the early evening, the data was clearly suggesting the heavier snows would remain south, with only a slight chance in the Tulsa area northward as dry air north and the main system south would not place us in a favorable position. Areas about a county south of Tulsa into the southeastern part of the state had the White Christmas while Tulsa to the north had a cloudy and cold Christmas.  The system even produced snow across North Texas, but not Northern OK.  Not even a dusting, near Tulsa.  The weather business is a crazy and humbling endeavor.

Yesterday the high in Tulsa was 31 recorded at 2:35pm.

The normal daily average high is 47   and the low is   28.

Our daily records include a high of 76 from 2008 and a low of 9 recorded on this date in 1914..

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Thanks for reading the Wednesday morning weather blog-discussion. 

Alan Crone
KOTV