Big Front This Afternoon

The cold front will be arriving this afternoon bringing an end to the unseasonably mild air with falling temps and strong northwest winds.  Before the boundary arrives readings will move into the upper 50s and lower 60s but by 5pm temps will be falling into the 40s and lower 50s.  There will be a chance of some light snow behind the system for a few hours tonight.  No advisories, watches, or warnings are posted regarding precipitation.  Dangerous wind chill values will develop tonight and early tomorrow with the strong northwest winds and low temps.  

The stacked upper low is moving well east of our area and we'll be in a holding pattern for a few hours before the strong cold front rolls across the area this afternoon and tonight.  The exiting system was responsible for a very good rainfall across southeastern OK yesterday.  Some locations picked up their monthly normal precip in less than 10 hours.  The Tulsa area remained along the northwestern edge of the precip and officially will go down in the books as a dry day.  A few brief showers were noted across southern Tulsa county and portions of Wagoner, but most of the rain stayed southwest of the I-44 area. 

The air mass to the north is a mix of arctic and Canadian air and will knock our temps back down well below normal Thursday and Friday before the numbers start to climb above normal this weekend. 

As the front moves across the area this afternoon and early evening the winds will increase speeds and move into the 20 to 40 mph range.  Some light precipitation is possible behind the system Wednesday evening into Thursday morning with some light flurries or light snow a possibility across southern Kansas and northern OK.  A dusting can't be ruled out but the wind and colder air will steal the headlines for the common denominator.  GFS bufkit values suggest some light accumulations are possible near and north of Tulsa with about a half inch to near 1 inch possible.  We'll keep the mention as " flurries" for the Tulsa area, but I will make mention of some light accumulations possible for northern sections of the area later tonight.  

The weekend appears mild with highs in the 50s but another fast moving system will arrive with a chance of showers or storms Sunday evening into Monday.   

The arctic oscillation continues to show signs of going negative around the middle of the month which would suggest much colder air moving across the Midwestern portion of the nation.   

I have attempted to become somewhat more active on twitter ( @alancrone) and you're encouraged to become a friend on the fan page of our face book stuff.   

Thanks for reading the blog-discussion and have a super great day.  Take the big coat:  you'll need it later tonight.