Short-Term Forecast Along With Thanksgiving Day Outlook

Notice the map from the Oklahoma Mesonet to the right. You may recall that I mentioned yesterday the low level air was relatively dry in the lower levels and that any rain would evaporate keeping temperatures from warming a great deal. The evaporative cooling effect is very evident on the referenced map with temperatures only in the 40s in the rain cooled air.

The system responsible for this light rain and showers will be spreading on eastward for the evening and overnight hours, then ending from west to east during the morning hours of Tuesday. Total amount of precipitation will be on the light side and generally no more than ¼ inch, if that. As the rain moves on eastward first thing Tuesday morning, we can expect our skies to be clearing by afternoon from west to east. Our surface winds will be shifting from NE this afternoon back to the SW by Tuesday afternoon along with the clearing afternoon skies for Tuesday.

Another cold front is still on schedule to arrive during the day Wednesday shifting our winds back to northerly. There will not be much moisture for this system to work with and the stronger dynamics will be north of us, so we are expecting this to be a dry frontal passage with the possible exception of along the Ok/Ks border where a few showers may occur late in the day Wednesday.

Temperatures Thursday and Friday mornings will be close to the freezing mark but the winds will quickly return to a southerly direction and become quite strong and gusty. This will result in a warming trend that will extend through the weekend. The southerly winds will also return more moisture our way possibly producing a few showers before the weekend is over.

It is after that when things start getting interesting. For the last few days I have been cussing and discussing the longer range guidance leading up to Thanksgiving Day. As mentioned on several occasions, these longer range products have a nasty habit of flip-flopping their solutions from one day to the next which is why we do not often put a lot of stock in their output. Thought though that many of you would like to have at least some general guidance regarding the preliminary outlook for Thanksgiving Day and so far it has been pretty consistent…..that is up until today. One of the products in particular, the ECMWF or the European model, has the next major storm system moving across Oklahoma in the days leading up to Thanksgiving Day and if the timing does not change then we would have very cool, but dry conditions for Thanksgiving and the next few days after that. On the other hand, the GFS which is the Global Forecast System, had been consistently doing much the same…..until today. It's current solution is not nearly so optimistic regarding Thanksgiving Day as it is bringing the early week storm system through a little more slowly which would imply a cold, wet Thanksgiving Day. At those longer time ranges, our experience has been that the ECMWF is the more stable solution and less likely to do the flip-flop routine. We will see.

In the meantime, stay tuned and check back for updates.

Dick Faurot