textproduct: Norman

KEY MESSAGES

Updated at 1056 AM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

- Beneficial rainfall is likely to occur during periods from Friday evening through Saturday night.

- Fire weather concerns return next week.

NEAR TERM

(Today and tonight) Issued at 1056 AM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

Subtropical ridging is resurgent just east of the 100th meridian today. That will keep the wind field light during the day. There will be areas of high cloud cover at times as the subtropical jet rounds the base of the high, but not enough to prevent plenty of solar warming. Temperatures will thus get well above-average across the entire area.

We'll see a very slight retrograde of the ridge axis tonight. Mid- level temps will still be plenty warm enough to keep us above freezing across the entire area, especially since it looks like we'll see some light southerly winds around daybreak.

Meister

SHORT TERM

(Thursday through Friday night) Issued at 1056 AM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

Not much changes with the large-scale pattern tomorrow. We remain just downstream of the standing wave's break point off of the Rockies, so a slowly-developing low pressure is expected to form in the far northwest corner of the CWA by Thursday afternoon. This kind of pattern often leads to anomalous wintertime warmth especially in the higher terrain of western north Texas and western Oklahoma. A possible mitigating factor to record-setting temps will be the presence of at least limited boundary-layer moisture. Even so, we'll get well into the 70s. Moisture return will become a little more prevalent overnight, particularly south of the weak surface low, keeping lows well above normal.

The ridge axis will finally be kicked eastward by the approach of a strong storm system on Friday afternoon. At some point by afternoon/evening, isentropic ascent will combine with saturation in the lower levels to produce a region of steady rainfall. Most likely this rainfall will not last quite as long nor contain quite the amount of total precipitation through daybreak Saturday as global models show, but most or all of us will see at least a wetting rain with this round of precipitation.

Meister

LONG TERM

(Saturday through next Tuesday) Issued at 1056 AM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

As the upper-level trough approaches on Saturday, a lull in precipitation is likely to develop ahead of it. While medium-range models are notoriously too conservative in the depiction and areal extent of dry slots, the GFS is already hinting at one while the NAM shows a well-defined dry slot moving across much of the area during the day on Saturday. This could have a couple of consequences:

1) Further reason to believe that deterministic QPFs are too high for the system as dry air eats into saturation and rainfall totals.

2) The possibility for severe weather near the Red River on Saturday afternoon as the dry slot aloft encourages greater surface-based instability than models (which currently show blanket 100% cloud cover) depict.

This second scenario is conditional and not-at-all supported by current deterministic guidance. Still, if I had a nickel for every time the NAM over-depicted cloud cover in the cool season only for broken sunshine to lead to rapid uptrends in instability... well, I'd have a nice pile of nickels. It is worth noting that machine- learning guidance such as the CSU MLP and NCAR AI ensembles all show a D4 severe risk of 5% (Marginal) across much of the eastern half of our area, and some of them show a 15% (Slight) risk extending into southern Oklahoma. Once again: conditional potential, but the mental model does support what the machine learning data are showing.

Underneath/behind the upper low on Saturday night and early Sunday, a final region of precipitation (wrap-around rain) is likely. Overall, the highest rainfall still is likeliest to be south and east of I-44, but probabilities of a deep soaking rain don't look quite as high. The Euro ensemble continues to be the most bearish with 25th percentile totals of 0.5-1.0 inches southeast of I-44, around 0.5 inches for the I-44 corridor, and trending toward minimal totals to the northwest. The 25th percentile might be a little conservative compared to reality with totals, but if I had a nickel every time medium-range models were too aggressive in their rainfall totals...

Won't dig too deep into the details regarding fire weather potential from early - middle of next week given the length that this long- term AFD has already reached, but some of the Week 2 analogs at 500 mb from the WPC show a distinctly concerning signal. A lot, of course, will depend on how much rain falls this weekend.

Meister

AVIATION

(12Z TAFS) Issued at 447 AM CST Wed Feb 11 2026

VFR conditions this TAF period. High clouds will stream across the area today and tonight. Northerly sfc winds will gradually shift towards the SE and S this TAF period as the sfc high slides off to the east.

PRELIMINARY POINT TEMPS/POPS

Oklahoma City OK 39 69 46 66 / 0 0 20 30 Hobart OK 36 72 45 69 / 0 0 10 30 Wichita Falls TX 39 75 51 74 / 0 0 10 30 Gage OK 37 71 37 62 / 0 0 10 30 Ponca City OK 35 66 41 64 / 0 0 10 30 Durant OK 43 70 50 73 / 0 0 20 30

OUN WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

OK...None. TX...None.