Warm Week Ahead.

In this morning's discussion, I showed the OK Mesonet maps of total precipitation over the last few days. It was obvious that for many locations, the rains have been generous; but, some locations are still too dry. Thought the map on the right would also be of interest. This is another product generated by the good folks at the OK Mesonet which in this case shows the soil moisture at 2" under sod. The note at the bottom explains the scale that is used. It is apparent that at least the surface moisture content across the state has certainly improved with the recent rains, but notice there are still some relative dry pockets to the west. This is troublesome because with the degree of warming we will be having this coming week, it will not take long for evaporation to deplete the shallow, surface soil moisture and for things to quickly dry out once again.

Speaking of warming, this coming week will be nowhere close to what a normal week in March should be like. Normally, we would have overnight lows in the upper 30s or lower 40s and daytime highs around 60 or so. This coming week, we are just fast forwarding past April to the middle of May which is when we typically see numbers like what are being forecast for much of this coming week.

The reason is the system responsible for the cool, wet weather today is quickly lifting out to the NE and weakening. It is not strong enough to pull any cool air down behind it at the surface and aloft the winds will be primarily from a SW direction. These SW winds will persist for the rest of the week until the next, stronger storm system drops into the Southern Rockies early next week. That type of flow aloft together with brisk southerly winds at the surface all add up to unusually warm conditions throughout this coming week. In fact, there will likely be records set across the Plains States and the degree of warmth together with the brisk surface winds will quickly dry things out once again.

There will also be at least a slight chance of rain each day beginning on Wednesday. The SW flow pattern aloft will have some weak disturbances passing through from time to time which together with abundant surface moisture will result in at least a few scattered showers or storms on just about any given day. Given the degree of warming and implied instability, that also suggests at least the possibility of a few severe storms before the week is out.

However, the longer range guidance is still suggesting the possibility of our next major storm system developing and affecting a large portion of the Plains States early the week of Spring Break. A lot can change between now and then, but so far there has been reasonable consistency on this particular system. It could get real interesting along about Tue or Wed of that week. So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot