Friday, April 5, 2024

Day 4 of Tulsa, OK (KTUL)

Good radiational cooling led to a low of 39F, before a rapid warmup to 73F with mostly sunny skies, though a small batch of high clouds are temporarily stopping the warmup right now. Maximum wind is 12 kt so far, with winds having switched to southeasterly. Southeasterly winds and moist advection will prevent as much radiational cooling from occurring tonight, though skies will be just partly cloudy with a deck of slightly thicker high clouds before completely clearing at around sunrise. It will be mostly sunny tomorrow, and combined with warm advection, will lead to a slightly warmer high temperature than today, though limited by the lack of any downsloping westerly component to the wind. There will be a band of mid-level clouds in the afternoon, which could make the high 1F lower or so, depending on exactly when it arrives. The high could occur before or after that, with a bit of a double temperature peak. 
 
It will be very windy as the pressure gradient strengthens ahead of a low-pressure system that will have moved eastward into the central Plains, and the sunshine will help mix the winds down to the surface. A dry line/subtle surface trough extending southward from the low-pressure system will ignite a broken squall line or line of scattered thunderstorms that will bring a brief period of moderate to heavy rain just before the end of the period (Sunday 06z). Given that the atmosphere hasn’t been moistened too much by Gulf of Mexico moisture yet, rainfall totals will likely be <0.5”, but the exact amount is highly uncertain due to the brief, convective nature of the rain. The Storm Prediction Center puts Tulsa in a marginal risk of severe weather, though with the loss of daytime heating and the best dynamics going to the north, it is unlikely that the convective winds will exceed the already very strong synoptic-scale winds during the day tomorrow.
 
Source: PivotalWeather
 
Source: Storm Prediction Center

 
Source: PivotalWeather
 

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