Record Heat, Chance Severe Storms.

As you can see from the chart on the right from the Ok Mesonet, some folks along the Ok/Ks state line picked up some badly needed rainfall last night. Unfortunately, they also had some hail along with that. It is also very obvious that most of us are still too dry and that is not likely to change anytime soon.

There is a very slight chance of isolated late afternoon storms firing up west of us again today, and if so they would be severe. But, those chances are very remote and they will most likely be too far west.

Sunday is a different story though as the dry line will be moving into eastern Oklahoma by afternoon and may provide a focus for storms to develop during the afternoon and evening hours. If so, they would also be severe; but we are only expecting about a 40% areal coverage as most of the activity should once again be further east of us. Despite the presence of the dry line, our surface winds will be gradually veering from southerly to a more SW component as it approaches which will not provide much in the way of low level convergence. It will then be overtaken by a cool front Sunday night with our winds becoming more NW during the overnight hours. This gradual change in the wind direction suggests most of the showers and storms will not really get going till they are on east of us.

The gusty southerly winds today and gusty S to SW winds Sunday will also maintain a very high fire danger. That will only be made worse by near record temperatures today as we should be near 90 this afternoon and in the mid-upper 80s for Sunday afternoon. Relative humidity levels will be dropping to around 40% this afternoon and even less for Sunday afternoon which also contributes to the high fire danger. We are not getting much relief at night either as our overnight lows are also in record warm territory.

It will be cooler Monday and to start the day on Tuesday, but we will still be warmer than normal during the day. Our next decent chance of showers or storms looks to be on Thursday, but at this point it does not appear to be a drought breaker either.

As always, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot