Back To Work

The cold front is slicing through the area this morning with some scattered showers and storms behind the boundary.  Most of this activity has been located to our northeast and east overnight, but a few showers and storms moved over the Tulsa metro and northeastern OK area between midnight and 2AM producing very little rainfall and strong winds.  The layer aloft or CAP was instrumental in suppressing storm formation Sunday afternoon and early evening.  This was probably a good thing.  If the storms would have formed, they would have been extremely severe super cells.  But the surface based storms never formed and almost all of the activity overnight has been elevated.  In this instance, this means the storms have been located behind the boundary. Updrafts are not able to rotate.  This means the hail production is hard to mature and also means the tornado threat is zero.  Strong winds due to the immense pressure gradient combined with the movement of the showers and storms did combine to produce winds from 40 to 50 mph in spots.   Meanwhile, environmental winds about hundred miles behind the boundary have been from 45 to near 60 mph earlier this morning.  These wind speeds will come down during the morning hours with northerly wind speeds from 15 to 30 mph this afternoon.

The clouds should stick around for the morning hours, but will begin to clear from the west to the east this afternoon.  It's unclear exactly when this clearing will occur in Tulsa, but I'm leaning toward early afternoon.  Temperatures will be back on the cool side with highs in the 50s.

 The next few days will be very spring like with increasing south winds and temperatures moving back into the 70s Wednesday and near the lower 80s for the remainder of the period.

 A weak boundary may enter southern Kansas or possibly make a little junket into northern OK Wednesday night into Thursday morning briefly before moving northward into Kansas.  A series of upper level systems will be nearing the southern and central plains Thursday through Saturday, but storm chances will remain scattered until about Saturday.  Saturday and Sunday our chances for organized storms will be increasing but Ill keep the chance on the low side for now.  The severe parameter numbers are also increasing during this time period. 

 GFS and EURO data both support a cold front moving over the area Sunday afternoon with slightly cooler air following into the following Monday. 

Next: 

Somehow, I managed to miss out on the nasty virus that moved through our family last week. It must have been a miracle from the dear Lord, because it moved like clockwork through sister, then brother, and eventually mother.  I was washing my hands every 30 minutes.  Yesterday I felt a little "iffy" during the afternoon, but I'm good to go this morning.