Cold Again...With Frost This Time

As many of you have probably noticed, another low has passed through Friday, bringing more rain and cold weather. For the past few weeks, the Oklahoma area has continued to see a weekly cold front that consistently appears sometime between Thursday and Saturday. Right now, it is about 6:00 p.m. and the cold front is currently slightly ahead of Interstate 44. In areas where the front has come through, the temperatures are in the low to mid-40's, and ahead of the front in the southeastern portions of the state temperatures are still in the upper-50's and low-60's. As the front moves through the southeast part of the state, expect these temperatures to decrease. 

As a result of this new front, along with clear skies and mild winds overnight, much of Oklahoma is under either freeze warnings or frost advisories for Saturday morning, and northern and northwestern Oklahoma have a chance of seeing temperatures below freezing. Central parts of the state will see lows in the mid-30's, and the north to northwest parts will see temperatures in the low-30's, Fortunately for those areas there is no expected precipitation, as the front will be long gone.

Onto more optimistic news, temperatures are supposed to warm up on Saturday and continue to warm up as the week progresses. Despite very cold temperatures Saturday morning, expect it to warm up into the mid-60's as the day goes on. 

This trend will continue Sunday, with temperatures in the low-70's, and mid-70's for the southern part of the state. Sunny skies are predicted for the weekend. 

As for next week, expect pretty consistent weather with temperatures in the mid to upper 60's all week with clear and sunny skies.

Despite all the gloominess that the cold front brought, these weekly patterns of rain have been having a positive effect on many areas in Oklahoma. Drought has been significantly reduced and many areas in the central portion of the state have no drought conditions whatsoever. Despite the consistency of these weekly patterns though, there is no precipitation predicted for the weekend at this time. However, next weekend is over a week away so there is still very little certainty when forecasting for that far out of a time period.

In other weather related news around the world:

This year's "extraordinary" start for hurricane season is expected to continue, as there is absolutely no tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic. So far this year has ranked as one of the weakest years on record hurricane-wise. According to the National Hurricane Center there have been 0 major hurricanes so far, and cyclonic energy (a measure of a hurricanes longevity and strength) is down 70 percent from normal. Despite this being a calm hurricane season, it has not been a very calm typhoon season for Asia. Currently super typhoon Francisco is predicted to become a category 5 by Saturday afternoon, and it is the third super typhoon this year (a super typhoon is a typhoon with sustained winds over 150 mph), and the 7th typhoon that would be considered a "major hurricane" (sustained winds over 111 mph) in the Atlantic.  In news for the central United States, South Dakota has reported that up to 30,000 cattle may have died in the blizzard that rocked the state almost 2 weeks ago with up to 4 feet of snow. With each cattle worth over 1500 dollars each, the financial toll for farmers in the area will be great. Nebraska is also recovering from a weather event, a large number of tornadoes that caused millions of dollars in damage from earlier this month. The largest reported tornado was categorized as an EF4 with wind speeds of up to 170 mph.

Information and graphics courtesy of: Mesonet, NWS, Weather Underground, and US Drought Monitor