Thursday, July 21st 2011, 5:14 am
Good morning.
Unfortunately, there is no major change to the forecast philosophy for the next few days. The heat wave will continue with no major relief, but a few "minor victories" will be possible soon.
You may have noticed a few more clouds yesterday afternoon between 1pm and 5pm. This will be the case again for the next few days with slightly more cloud cover this weekend.
Temperatures should be a degree or two warmer today and tomorrow with many locations topping out around 103 to 105.
The models are indicating a surge of moisture will be possible this weekend, mainly from east Texas into western Arkansas, but a few scattered late afternoon storms will be possible Saturday and Sunday across extreme eastern OK and western Arkansas.
The mid level ridge continues to be the main player and has moved slightly southeast of the area today. A few showers and storms are noted this morning across western Kansas with an outflow boundary sliding southeast into northwestern OK. A frontal boundary will slide into central Kansas by this weekend but will not move into our area.
The ridge is expected to move back across the central plains this weekend and could possibly nudge a little westward early next week. The GFS has been hinting at this possibility for a while but I think it's too aggressive with clouds and any pop potential for our area early next week.
The EURO continues to keep the mid level ridge very close to our area through most of next week, before finally weakening Thursday and Friday while allowing another disturbance from the Gulf region to move northwest. We've seen these scenarios a few times before this summer in the data, with the first one about 3 weeks ago that actually produced a few showers and storms in the state. Yesterdays EURO was also supporting a weak Gulf disturbance moving under the ridge this weekend, but this seems unlikely based on the latest run, but the model depiction for late next week is the best hope we've seen in the data in over a month.
July 21st, 2011
September 29th, 2024
September 17th, 2024
December 13th, 2024
December 13th, 2024
December 13th, 2024
December 13th, 2024