Even Colder Tonight, Then a Warming Trend.

As the map on the right shows, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, this is easily the coldest we have been since the middle of February and temperatures have been slow to recover this afternoon. In fact, we will not be much above freezing by the end of the day and with clear skies, light winds, and cold, dry air in place, look for temperatures to be even colder to start the day on Tuesday. Overnight lows will generally be in the teens with possibly some lower teens in the cooler valley locations first thing Tuesday morning.

But, the cold air will not be sticking around for too long as the cold ridge of high pressure will quickly slide on eastward allowing for a return to southerly winds. Tuesday afternoon will have a SW wind component, sunny skies, and high temperatures that should make it well into the 40s.

Even warmer conditions are then expected for the rest of the week as those southerly winds kick up and become rather strong and gusty by Thursday and Friday. That will raise some fire danger concerns as we are obviously still too dry. Look for temperatures to be back above normal Wednesday afternoon and much above normal again for Thursday, Friday, and quite possibly into the weekend.

Our next chance of precipitation still looks to be late Friday and perhaps into the day Saturday. The longer range guidance continues to be somewhat inconsistent in handling this particular system with a wetter solution coming from the ECMWF and a drier solution from the GFS. However, the trends have generally sided with the drier solution. It seems that each time the longer range products get our hopes up for a decent shot at some good precipitation, it has not materialized for one reason or another. So, will not get too excited about our rain chances with this system until we get closer to the event and start seeing some better consistency. At any rate, what does fall would be liquid as we will be much warmer by then.

Also, the air behind this system will not be all that cold, so although the weekend will see another cool-down, it will still be relatively mild and certainly not as cold as we are now.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot