Still Windy, Just Not as Strong as Saturday

Warm and windy for today, but not as windy. A weak boundary has drifted into portions of northern Oklahoma this morning with a weaker pressure gradient associated with it. Notice the wind map on the right, courtesy of the OK Mesonet. Gusty SW winds of 10-20+ are evident ahead of the wind shift with much lighter winds elsewhere. That boundary will become diffuse later in the day, but the effect will still be for the winds to not be as strong as was the case on Saturday. Since the primary wind direction is from a southerly component, that also means we will be very mild again today.

Look for a re-enforcing boundary to make another run at us on Monday shifting our winds from southerly in the morning to a more NW direction during the afternoon. This is not a very strong system either, so wind speeds should remain less than 20 mph. Also, temperatures will remain quite mild for the same reason.

It now appears that any threat of rain will hold off till during the overnight hours of Monday night and into the day Tuesday. The primary location still looks to be over the extreme E and SE counties of our state. This delayed time frame is due to a disturbance aloft which has been located in the Pacific west of Baja California. Due to its position, it has not been sampled well by our weather observation network. We should get better sampling during the day today, but the bottom line is that it is moving more slowly than first thought. Also, it is taking a more southerly track so its influence will be primarily confined to the extreme SE counties of Oklahoma.

This slower movement also means Tuesday will be milder with a stronger surface high not moving into the state till later in the day or that night. However, this surface ridge also has more support than originally thought so when it does get here, it will be noticeably cooler for Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, we may see temperatures near the freezing mark by Thursday morning.

After that, a return to southerly winds will start a warming trend which will extend through the coming weekend. There are also preliminary indications of a more significant storm system shaping up later in the weekend and into early that following week. Too early to get too excited about the system just yet as model data will likely change course several times between now and then. But, the preliminary indications suggest it could turn out to be a pretty significant storm system.

So, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot