After a nearly weeklong cold snap that virtually paralyzed Seminole County, it appears a big warmup is on the way.

A winter storm delivered a one-two punch to Oklahoma last Tuesday, pelting the state with ice and snow accompanied by single-digit temperatures and double-digit windchill factors. The thaw out commenced Friday, as temperatures began climbing past the freezing mark.

At press time Friday, the National Weather Service forecast said sunshine and highs in the upper 40s were on tap for Saturday, followed by a high near 60 on Sunday. And it gets even better as the new week begins. Temperatures are expected to hover around the 70-degree mark through Wednesday before tapering off slightly on Thursday, when the forecasted high is 61 degrees.

In his daily weather blog, Oklahoma State Climatologist Gary McManus offered a somewhat humorous outlook on the warm weather forecast.

“Friday looks manageable. Saturday not bad. Sunday good. Monday great. Tuesday? Fantastic,” McManus wrote. “After this, 50s are the new 70s, so those 70s will be like 90s. Now come summer (which starts March 18th), 90s will be the new 70s.”

McManus said the spring outlook is none too kind for the western half or so of the state, with above normal temps and below normal precipitation most likely, which then leads to drought development through that period.

“It doesn’t have to happen that way. Odds aren’t greatly tilted, and they’re based off of a weak La Nina. Although impacts from La Nina and El Nino tend to dampen quite a bit during the spring season, there are often still lingering impacts. The caveat here is that it IS a weak La Nina, so the impacts are less likely to occur, with higher variability. However, those impacts are still more likely than not,” McManus wrote.

The winter storm shut down schools, businesses and government offices across the county for several days. Most schools returned to classrooms on Friday, and the Seminole County Courthouse, which had been closed since Monday, Feb. 17 in observance of President’s Day, reopened Friday.