Hot Tuesday, Chance Rain Wednesday.

From the map on the right, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, you can see the effects of the spotty showers and storms that occurred over the weekend. The map is showing the average soil moisture at the two inch level, not a very pretty picture as our soils are for the most part just too dry. Of course, that also adds up to a drought situation which continues to worsen with each passing day and also a potentially dangerous fire danger situation. The fire danger is also a function of wind and relative humidity. Fortunately our winds are much less today, but the relative humidity level is quite low with minimum levels dropping to 20% or less this afternoon and we can expect that again Tue afternoon.

Tuesday will also be hotter with daytime temperatures pretty much at or well above triple digits once again. In fact, Tuesday may turn out to be the hottest day of this week as a weak disturbance will be moving through on Wednesday to bring us at least a chance of showers/storms. The extra cloud cover should keep us near the 100 degree mark on Wed and slightly below that on Thursday. Perhaps more importantly is the chance of rain. The latest and greatest data has come in with a wetter solution than previous runs so at least the trend is encouraging. Don't want to get your hopes up too high just yet though so am keeping the chances at the 30% level for late Wednesday and into the overnight hours.

Right now, Thu and Fri look to be partly cloudy and dry with little or no mention of rain. The weekend is somewhat questionable as the longer range guidance has been flip-flopping so not a lot of consistency there. It does appear that temperatures will have moderated somewhat though and we should stay below triple digits. As far as our rain chances go, will keep a 20% chance in the forecast and monitor subsequent model runs to see if the solutions become more consistent and we can start trending one way or the other.

The longer range guidance continues to exhibit very little consistency regarding any possible pattern changes over the next week or two. At least our days are getting shorter as we are losing about 2 minutes per day of possible daylight so that in itself will help with a gradual reduction in temperatures. Really do not see a major, drought-busting, rainmaker coming along anytime soon though.

So, stay cool, stay tuned, and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot