Another Winter Storm to Hit Oklahoma

Headlines include yet another winter storm.. more on that in a minute.

West northwest winds should give us highs in the lower 50s again today.
We should see a few clouds around periodically. A cold front to our
north will spawn off a weak wind shift line that will move through the
state this evening. Winds will briefly shift to the north before going
calm overnight. Temperatures will fall into the 20s with a few upper
10s in the northwest.

South winds return for Tuesday, pushing highs into the lower 60s. Cloud
cover should increase from the southwest as the day wears on. Fire
danger will be high on Tuesday due to low RH.

A strong arctic front with attendant 1040 high will push southward into
Oklahoma Wednesday morning. It will have a lot of wind with it and drop
temperatures dramatically. We should be in the upper 30s by sunrise
Wednesday, and fall below freezing in central OK before noon. There
will likely be a little bit of light drizzle as the front passes. Of
greater concern is overrunning precip setting up later on. A storm
system moving into the southwest US will cross over the cold air as we
head into Thursday. Light precip should break out across most of the
state by Wednesday evening. BUFKIT soundings keep amounts generally
around 2/10ths of an inch or less. Of course it should be enough to
slicken up roads as we head into Thursday morning. There are strong
signals in both the GFS and NAM for sleet as the predominant
precipitation type north of I-40 through northern Oklahoma. A band of
freezing drizzle/light freezing rain will extend from southwest to
central to east-central Oklahoma by sunrise on Thursday. This area
should shift north as the day goes on, keeping the freezing drizzle/rain
going across central OK with more light rain in southern parts of the
state. BUFKIT sounding for Gage showed some light snow as the system
ends on Friday morning.

We will warm up into the 50s on Saturday with mid-60s on Sunday. There
is some question as to what will happen after that. ECMWF/NOGAPS/DGEX
show another storm system to our southwest on Sunday. The system
appears to be far enough away that I am not going to bring it in until
Tuesday. GFS wants to bring a cold front in early on Monday morning,
followed by the upper level storm. I think it is being too aggressive
with the progress of this system and I will delay it a day unless other
models change their story. Therefore, we could be dealing with yet
another one of these freezing precipitation events on Tuesday.

Please note we are still shuffling forecast shifts as every one of us is
still sick to some degree. This will prevent us from being able to
schedule any events/talks until this passes. We even had to canceled a
storm spotter class due to the presenter being unavailable.

Forecast graphics updated .. www.okcfox.com

Day 8-9: 40/66 35/43
Day 9: 30%
Greg Withworth.Fox 25/OKC/Used with permission