Good Sunday evening, everyone. As advertised, we turned chilly to wrap up our weekend as our cold front rolled on through earlier today. Ahead of it, we saw some scattered rain and some t-storms late Saturday afternoon and into Saturday night before we had one last round of scattered showers roll through this morning. While it didn’t bring much in the way of accumulating rainfall, we did see early morning highs around 60 before we dropped back into the 50s for morning and into the afternoon.
Breaking down our weather setup, the cold front pushed to our east and has been producing strong to severe t-storms across parts of the Deep South and the Tennessee Valley. With us behind the front and with high pressure helping to keep our breeze out of the north, we’ll keep quiet to start the new work/school week out.
Upstairs at the jet stream level, we have our upper-level low that helped bring in the rain and t-storms yesterday and this morning lifting across the Upper Midwest and into southern Canada. Our next system to watch for the next few days is the upper low sitting in New Mexico.
For our Monday, we’ll keep things quiet across the region. While it is nice that skies have been clearing out this evening, the clear skies will work together with some drier air working in and a light north breeze to start us off on a cold note. Everyone will start out in the upper 20s to near 30 before our Monday AM drive gets going.
While the clear skies, light breeze and dry air means a cold start for Monday morning, those same conditions will allow us to warm up quickly throughout the day. After we see temperatures push into the upper 40s by the lunch hour, we’ll see afternoon highs top out around 53 across the region.
While we do stay quiet for Monday, let’s talk about Tuesday. The upper-level low sitting out in New Mexico will track just to our south across eastern Oklahoma and central Arkansas. Most of us will see partly sunny skies for Tuesday with highs in the lower 50s. By the late afternoon and early evening hours, we’ll keep an eye on this low. While much of the moisture wants to stay to our south, I’m not ruling out a slight chance for some rain showers for areas south of I-44 in Missouri and Oklahoma. However, the upper low will be strong enough to bring colder air down to the surface across the higher elevations of northwest Arkansas. That could support some snow trying to mix in. If any of that colder air aloft and at the surface can sneak into some areas south of Grand Lake and south of I-44 in MO, that could allow for some snowflakes to try and mix in.
The best chance for those rain showers (and possible snow showers) will be for the late afternoon hours and into the early evening hours. If any snow mixes in and tries to accumulate, we do not see this being a big impact for us. At worst, we see any possible snow amounts ranging between a dusting and a quarter of an inch.
Once that wave clears out by Tuesday night, we’ll have an upper-level ridge build in for Wednesday and Thursday. That will keep us quiet under partly to mostly sunny skies with highs topping out in the lower 60s. By Thursday, though, we’ll have our eyes on our next system that will work in from the west.
As we kick off the weekend, the upper low will start working into the region. This will bring mostly cloudy skies in here on Friday with a better chance for scattered rain as highs drop back into the middle 50s. Due to the slower approach of this wave and the moisture working with cooler temperatures, we have taken any t-storm chances out of the forecast with this wave.
That wave will quickly scoot off to our southeast as we head into Saturday and Sunday. The end result is our skies turning quiet once again. With partly to mostly sunny skies, we’ll hold on to highs near 60 for the rest of the weekend. Doug has your long range forecast for the whole month of March and the first few days of April down below.
Have a good night and a great Monday!
Nick
Next Monday-Saturday: We’ll stay mild with rain chances on Monday. Cooling down a bit Tuesday but back to mild temps by Wednesday. Showers and thunderstorms on Thursday and Friday. Cooling down and drier for the weekend.
March 14th-20th: We start the week with rain or snow chances on Sunday. The cycle before this system produced 1″ of snow. With cool temperatures for Sunday, we’ll watch it. Mild temperatures return for Tuesday and Wednesday with rain chances on Wednesday and Thursday. This system gave us severe weather with some tornado warnings on January 30th, lets watch this one! Cool for Friday before we turn milder for Saturday as we start a dry weekend out.
March 21st-27th: We’ll be mild for Sunday and Monday before we turn briefly cooler for Tuesday. A brief jump to a mild Wednesday before we stay cool for the rest of the week. We’ll watch for slight rain chances on Monday and better rain chances for Wednesday and Thursday.
March 28th-April 3rd: Cool temperatures for Sunday and Monday. We’ll briefly turn mild for Tuesday and Wednesday before we cool back down for the rest of the week. We’ll watch for rain chances on Sunday, slight rain chances on Wednesday, rain chances on Thursday and rain/snow chances to start the weekend out.