Thursday Morning Update

The MCV tracked across far southern OK and north Texas yesterday afternoon and did produce some light showers from McAlester southward to the Red River.  No storm activity was able to form north of the vort and the Tulsa area remained dry and cloudy for most, but not all of the day. The area southeast of the vort, including the DFW area, experienced severe storms last night with 60 mph wind and large hail.  

We're watching for signs of a weak and subtle upper air wave that may brush the state today with an isolated storm or two, mainly to our west.  There may also be a few scattered storms developing this morning in the south-central OK to NE Texas vicinity.  These storms would not impact our immediate area of concern.

 The operational models have been horrible lately from day to day runs, and the confidence in any one solution remains very low.   The latest runs have made some major changes for the short term periods through Friday as another short wave approaches the region.   Scattered storms are possible today across the northwestern part of the state and may attempt to move eastward.  The usually reliable NSSL 4K attempts to blow up this wave into a small MCS moving across the state this morning.  I don't think this will occur, but later tonight another wave will have a chance of developing a MCS out of southwestern or south-central Kansas that would move southeast early tomorrow morning.  The models have varying solutions about the exact track.  At this point, the prudent move is to include a slight chance of pre-dawn storms Friday morning near and northwest of Tulsa. 

Another boundary will enter the central plains Saturday and blow up another storm complex Saturday evening that could have a chance of moving into northern OK into the Sunday morning hours.   I'll only include a slight 10% pop for this time period for today's forecast package.    This boundary will more than likely stall to our north with little impact on our region regarding our temperatures.   The EURO depicts another southward push with the boundary for Wednesday and Thursday of next week and I'll keep a slight mention in the forecast for these extended periods.

Temperatures will be moving back into the lower 90s for afternoon highs for the next several days as morning lows move into the lower 70s in the metro and the upper 60s in the outlying rural areas.  South winds will increase low level flow and moisture.  This will increase the heat index values over the next few days and we will be experiencing a muggy, warm, and breezy weekend.