Warmer Wednesday.

Yesterday's storms went through too fast to drop much in the way of rainfall as the map on the right shows. In fact, the official total for Tulsa was only .12" with only a few locations even getting as much as ¼ inch. And, the rest of the coming week looks, for the most part, to be dry as well with our next decent chance of rain not till early next week. I say for the most part as there is a weak qpf signal for Thursday night into early Friday morning from one of the numerical models we use, but that is not consistent with earlier guidance nor other sources, so will ignore that solution for now.

In the meantime, we have some beautiful weather in store with lots of sunshine today and tomorrow and much lighter winds than we had yesterday. The winds today will be rather brisk from the S and SW at 10-20 mph, then light southerly winds tonight, a more W to SW wind on Wednesday and southerly winds Thursday morning shifting to the north before Noon Thursday. Gusty northerly winds for Thursday afternoon will bring us back to the real world with respect to temperatures.

After reaching well into the 60s this afternoon and near 70 for Wednesday afternoon, the high on Thursday will likely occur around Noon and near the 60 degree mark. After that, cooler air will be filtering into the state and the high on Friday will only be near 50. Keep in mind that 55 is a normal daytime high for this time of year.

The cool-down for Friday into Saturday morning will be followed by a quick rebound as our winds return to southerly for Saturday afternoon and Sunday. That should get us back into the above normal range for our daytime highs although our nights will be rather cold for Friday and Saturday mornings.

We continue to receive conflicting guidance regarding early that following week which creates additional uncertainty regarding any precipitation. A cool front should be moving across the state by early Monday so Monday and Tuesday are expected to be cooler. There are also indications of at least some precipitation developing by later Monday or perhaps on Tuesday, but until we see better consistency, will keep the chances at 20%.

So, all indications are that, on average, this last week of February will be much milder than normal which has pretty much been the trend all winter long. In fact, so far the month of February is running nearly a full degree above normal.

As always, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot