Hot Weekend, Hotter Week Ahead.

The image on the right, courtesy of the OK Mesonet, shows the rainfall across the state over the last 24 hours. The plotted values are from the actual Mesonet sites in each county and the coloring incorporates some radar estimates as well. This is often a pretty accurate representation of the big picture regarding rain, but will not always account for the local variations. For example, the storms late yesterday were small and produced some much heavier amounts under their cores, but those heavier amounts were not sampled by the observational network and therefore do not show up in this analysis. We have received reports of some locations that received upwards of 2" in a short period of time. Obviously, if you were one of the lucky ones that caught a good rain, count your blessings as most of us missed out.

Unfortunately, our prospects for additional rainfall are not very promising. An axis of somewhat deeper moisture remains just E and SE of the state but close enough that a few, spotty showers/storms could pop up with the daytime heating. The most likely locations for that would be the more terrain favored locations in E and SE OK. Elsewhere, we will have mostly sunny to partly cloudy skies and it will be hot. At least the additional moisture from yesterday's spotty rains will help hold temperatures in check for a day or two. By that I mean, we should at least stay below 100 today and Sunday, but after that the heat will be building back across the state.

The pattern change aloft that brought us below triple digits for the most part over the past week and produced at least a few showers/storms will be changing again with an upper level ridge building back over us by late in the week. That will pretty well eliminate what slim chances of rain there are and it also means temperatures will be climbing. Triple digits should be the general rule by the middle through the latter part of the week under bright sunny skies and with a southerly breeze. In fact, triple digits look to be common right on through the coming weekend as well.

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

Dick Faurot