Warming Up in Time for the Weekend.

The first good, widespread rainfall of this year has moved on eastward now but left some decent rainfall totals across much of the state.  Notice the 2 day totals from the OK Mesonet.

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As you can see, amounts exceeded 2” for some locations except the more NW counties which missed out on this round of rainfall.  For Tulsa, the official total was just under ½” and that is the most rain recorded here since Dec 28.  By the way, we mostly missed out on the winter weather but some locations east of Fayetteville, Ark received more than 5” of snow as you can see on the next map, courtesy of the local NWS office here in Tulsa.  Some of the hilltops in LeFlore county also picked up some snow.

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After today’s sunshine, we expect generally fair skies at night followed by mostly sunny skies during the day as a general rule for the rest of the week going into the weekend.  There will be some occasional mid level clouds from time to time, but still lots of sunshine each day.  Also, the gusty NW winds of today will be subsiding tonight, followed by another round of brisk NW winds for Thursday which will then become more southerly as we head into the weekend.  Notice how strong the winds have been today with the max wind map.  Those NW winds will be gusty again Thursday but not as strong as today, then gusty southerly winds will return for Friday continuing through Saturday. 

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Despite the recent rains, those gusty winds will result in an increased fire danger situation once again.  The vegetation is still dormant and the warm temperatures together with the gusty winds and dropping humidity levels will dry out the vegetation rather quickly.  It does not take long for the vegetation to go from wet to dry with these conditions.

As you can see on our forecast page, temperatures will be at or below normal through Friday morning, but much warmer as we head into the weekend.  That will be due to the brisk northerly winds through Thursday, a return to southerly winds on Friday and Sat together with lots of sunshine.  A weak boundary should be moving into the state on Sunday, but this looks to be a dry system as well as a very weak one with only a minor impact on temperatures.

Looking further down the road, the guidance diverges significantly as we head into the middle of next week.  I have included upper air forecasts from the GFS & the ECMWF for the mid levels of the atmosphere (around the 18,000’ level) for comparison valid at 6PM Wed of next week.  The differences aloft are striking and have huge implications for our surface weather during that time frame.  IF the GFS is correct, would not be surprised to see snow on Wednesday; but, IF the ECMWF is correct the precipitation would be pretty well confined to Texas.  Therein lies the problem we often face when trying to forecast the weather, particularly at those longer time scales. 

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I should point out that both the GFS  & ECMWF have exhibited some run to run continuity over the last few model cycles, although there have been differences in the details.  However, they are obviously far apart in the model to model comparison.  Also, their respective ensemble solutions are not very supportive of these extreme operational solutions.  As a result, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the middle to latter part of next week.  At any rate, our forecast page strives to reach a middle ground of sorts until the details become better defined; but, keep in mind this particular system is currently way out in the Pacific so there is lots of time for these things to get sorted out.

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

Dick Faurot