Christmas Weekend a Little More Interesting.

As mentioned in yesterday's discussion and as Mike Grogan mentioned in his excellent morning discussion, the Christmas Day forecast is not as straight forward as appeared to be the case earlier in the week. The fly in the ointment is a disturbance aloft that has been spinning around west of El Paso, Tx and will eventually move on eastward. This system is stronger, moving more slowly, and taking a more northward track than anticipated just a few days ago and it may yet pull a few more surprises.

At any rate, it now appears that we will have, at the very least, more cloud cover for Christmas Day which will also keep temperatures down a bit. Any precipitation should be light with the possibility of some wintry precipitation Christmas morning for SW OK. On this side of the state, we have had to put in a slight chance of precipitation for that evening and extending through the overnight hours to account for the uncertainty. Despite the strength of the system aloft, it does not have much moisture to work with so anything that may fall will be very light and should not create any travel issues.

Christmas Eve will get off to a very cold start with morning temperatures in the teens and lower 20s. The clear morning skies will give way to increasing cloud cover by evening and partly cloudy to at times mostly cloudy skies for Christmas Day itself. This will keep daytime temperatures generally in the mid-upper 40s which is pretty close to normal. Fortunately, the winds will be very light through the weekend.

By the way, the map on the right shows the snow on the ground as of early this morning. Not much more additional snowfall is expected between now and Christmas with the possible exception of far W Tx and N Mexico which already has snow on the ground. Thus, those are the areas that most likely will see a white Christmas this time around.

After the system aloft finally moves on eastward, we can expect a pretty quiet stretch of weather for much of the coming week. Monday will likely have lingering cloud cover with any threat of rain confined to Arkansas and points on eastward. The rest of the week will see moderating temperatures with daytime highs much above normal for this time of year. Thus, the year will end on a very mild note.

As always, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot