Monday Morning Update

The heat wave will continue for the next few days, but temperatures will drop below 100 by Thursday and Friday with a slight chance of showers and storms.  The approaching weekend should once again support daytime highs above 100. 

The mid-level ridge of high pressure that has been plaguing our area for the past 2 months will slowly slide eastward and weaken slightly during the next 36 hours.  The first impact of the ridge sliding east will allow for a few isolated showers and storms today across the southern part of the state.  These will more than likely stay south of the Tulsa area, but we have about a 10% chance of an isolated storm near Tulsa.  I will not include this probability on the map for today.

The second impact of the ridge weakening and changing position will occur Thursday and Friday.  A mid-level short wave trough will slide across the middle part of the nation Thursday and Friday.  This trough will have a shot at shoving a weak surface boundary southward into the state by Friday morning that will give us a chance of scattered showers or storms.  I will include a mention of isolated storms for Thursday and Friday, but will not assign a real "pop" to the main graphics package at this point.  If model data remains consistent, we'll be adding a 20 pop for Thursday and a whopping 30% probability for Friday! Unfortunately, the model data also supports the mid-level ridge moving back over the state Saturday and Sunday and this would increase the highs to around 100 to 103 and shut off the storm chances to the region.

Temperatures today will range from the upper 90s across far southern OK to around 103 across NE Ok and SE Kansas, including another triple digit day in Tulsa.  Today will be the 17^th day of triple digit temperatures for Tulsa and the surrounding areas.  If the forecast verifies,  this week will feature 5 of the next 7 days at or above 100.

The normal average high is 94 with a morning low of 73.  The precipitation for the year currently stands at 18.87 inches of rain which is now a departure of almost 5 inches compared to a normal precip of 23.68 for year to date.

Sunrise today is at 6:24AM with the sun setting at 8:36pm.  Tomorrow morning sunrise is at 6:25AM and the sun set is 8:35PM:  a subtle hint that the sun angle is slowly changing as we draw closer to the fall equinox in September.