Every so often the weather dictates confusion and this weekend is one of those times. This creates doubt in my forecast/what I think is going to happen and despite certain players being on the field (a term I love) when analyzing precipitation chances there are still questions that are out there, mainly timing and where when it comes to the rain situation.

I’m still not convinced that we’re going to get a big rain out of this scenario this weekend. It can all change in the course of a few hours at least…but there are still doubts in my mind. The thing is, IF we can get storms to really organize then considering how juicy the atmosphere is it would just let loose with rainfall….on the order of 1-3″. How widespread this will be though is a BIG question in my mind.

Another wonderful afternoon out there with partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the lower 70s. As expected clouds bubbled up before the lunch hour and will be with us off and on through about 5PM when the sun’s heating starts to come down. As that happens the updrafts from the sun’s heat will slow down and the clouds will mostly shrivel up and fall apart rather quickly. The bottom line is that the evening looks just as nice as yesterday so outdoor plans will go off without a hitch from Mother Nature.

Breaking: After further analysis of the data from the El Reno tornado, it has been determined that it was an EF5 tornado (winds over 200 MPH) and it was 2.6 miles wide…making the tornado the largest ever from a width standpoint. There is still a very minor question about how strong the winds actually were at the surface. OU RaXPol radar data, recorded winds of 296 MPH close to the surface (500 feet above the ground). The F-4 Wilber-Hallam, Nebraska, tornado May 22, 2004 was the previous record holder for the widest tornado on record at 2.5 miles wide. Should this wind reading hold, it would be the second highest recorded wind speed after the Moore, OK 1999 tornado with winds recorded by Doppler On Wheels of 318 MPH. Also the OU data indicates that the forwards speed of some of the vortices were 150 MPH.