Monday Morning Update

A front will move across the area this morning with a few storms followed by cooler air. Highs today will be in the lower 70s with north winds.

A cold front is moving southeastward this morning and will bring a noticeably different air mass to the region for a few days.  We'll be replacing our humid upper 80s with a nice high in the 70s for a few days. More importantly, overnight lows will drop into the 50s and we'll experience some drier air for a few days.  Before the dry air moves across the area a few showers or storms will continue to be possible across NE Ok this morning and across the southeastern part of the state this afternoon.  A few storms across extreme SE OK may be severe later today.

Our air mass was extremely unstable yesterday afternoon but an apparent layer of warm air aloft (the cap) kept surface based thunderstorms from forming in the warm sector.  This was a good thing.  The parameters would have supported baseball or slightly larger hail yesterday afternoon.  As the front slides across the area this morning we have seen no surface based or pre-frontal storm development.  All of the thunderstorm activity has been post-frontal activity with relatively small hail, winds near 40 mph, and frequent cloud to ground lightning.  The coverage of the activity this morning is relatively small and currently confined to the far NE part of the state into SE Kansas.  We may continue to see some development behind the front through the early morning hours and I'll keep a small mention in the forecast for this probability.

The boundary may be slow to clear extreme southern OK and a few more scattered showers or storms may be possible along the Texoma region through Tuesday morning.  A surface ridge of high pressure will build into the middle part of the nation by tomorrow afternoon bringing a reinforcing shot of dry air and north breezes to the region.  I think this air mass will stick around until Thursday before a return surface flow from the southeast will move across the area.  This will attempt to bring low level moisture back across the Eastern OK vicinity as we slide closer to the weekend.

The main upper level system for the next few days will be a feature that will cut off across the desert southwest.  This upper air low will eventually take a slow southern route and will be moving across part of Texas by Friday into the upcoming weekend.  The current projection of the system would keep most of the precipitation to our south, but the EURO and GFS both suggest some light precip signals for the weekend.  I'll more than likely add a slight pop for this period or at last make some mention ON Air for this small probability.  It's interesting to note the data last week had this upper air low moving much closer to our area with a high probability of rain and thunderstorm activity.    The jury may not be finished with this verdict, so stay tuned.

The high temperature yesterday was 87.  Our normal high is 77 and the normal low is 56.   Records for Today indicate a high of 93 from 1918 and a record low of 40 from 1931.  Sunrise will be at 6:24AM and sunset will be at 8:17PM for Tulsa.  Our precipitation for the year is at 12.09 and we're currently about .40 above normal for the year.