Rainy Start to Tulsa State Fair

As we assured you toward the end of the extremely hot summer, rainy and cooler days were bound to come with the arrival of fall. After two unseasonably hot days, much of Green Country is now caught up in an unsettled pattern with a multi-day rain event underway. Our land is still in desperate need of water so this rain couldn't have come sooner, but it just so happens to overlap with the start of the Tulsa State Fair.

Not-so-fair weather is anticipated for the beginning of the fair thanks to a frontal boundary stalled just to the north of our area. As weak, upper-level disturbances pass from east to west over this east-to-west oriented boundary, we see flare-ups of rain and storm complexes. We saw our first round Tuesday night into the morning hours on Wednesday. Another round is expected tonight, later on Thursday, and again on Friday. Even in the intermediary times, scattered showers and a few storms can't be ruled it. The take-home point? The rain won't be continuous, but our rain chances run from now, solidly through Saturday.

The map above shows an estimation of the rain still to come. Widespread 1-2" amounts of rain are possible into the weekend with locally heavier totals. We can't rule out the threat of severe weather either. We are entering our secondary severe weather season as stronger upper-level support meets a still warm and occasionally muggy air mass at the surface. Hail and high winds are the main threat with any storms that occur, mainly during the afternoon and evening hours.

We won't see the impacts of the rain on our drought on the official Drought Monitor (I love to show so often here) until next week. However, if this amount of rain pans out, we will continue to see things green up before the inevitable leaf-fall and dormancy of much of our vegetation as autumn wears on. In fact, just the other day, I noticed a number of trees (Bradford pears among them) that had completed budded out for a second time this year! I'm no botanist, but it seems the harsh summer conditions temporarily brought those trees to a winter-like, barren state before the rains and cooler weather tricked them into thinking it was spring once again – just my humble observation.

Back to the headline of the post, if you are heading out to the fair later this week, bring your rain gear! If you want a guarantee of dry, pleasant weather to stroll the midway, early next week would be your time to go. Enjoy the rain in the meantime!

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