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Does Tulsa have cold weather every Martin Luther King Jr. parade day?
Published: 1/21/2013 10:09 AM
Last Modified: 1/21/2013 10:16 AM

Dress warmly, parade participants: Leila VanDyke, 9, member of the Walt Whitman Baby Hornets, dances along with her dance team, during a parade honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on Monday, Jan. 16, 2011. CORY YOUNG/Tulsa World File

Also dressed warmly: Kimberly Green, from State Farm, jams with colleagues as she participants in the annual parade celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. along Greenwood Avenue, in Tulsa, on Monday, Jan. 21, 2008. CORY YOUNG/Tulsa World File

It's not your imagination: Tulsa's weather does not cooperate with its Martin Luther King Jr. parade day.

January is typically the coldest month in Tulsa during the year, even colder than December. But, why must Tulsa weather take the parade day as a day to have less-nice weather?

Here's a look at MLK parade days since 2007 for tales of cruel twists in weather:

Jan. 15, 2007: Less than a week prior, Tulsa was enjoying highs up to 67 degrees. Then, several days before the parade, Tulsa got rain, so the temperatures dropped to freezing. This continued for several days, with freezing and non-freezing precipitation until the parade was postponed. That meant that 2007's parade was actually held on...

March 31, 2007: A happy ending. 67 degrees and only trace amounts of rain. But, they did have to wait more than two months for the perfect parade weather.

Jan. 21, 2008: January 2008 had several days reach the 70s, including a high of 75 on Jan. 7. However, by parade day, Tulsa's temperatures returned to its normals in the 30s, with a high of 38 and even some rain.

Jan. 19, 2009: Like the year before, optimists might have seen Jan. 3's high of 78 degress and thought surely, this parade day will be different. While temperatures hit a high of 51, temperatures also sank to a freezing 29 degrees.

Jan. 18, 2010: Every list needs and outlier, and in this case, it's 2010. Setting up for doom and gloom early on in January with lows reaching the single digits a week before, with one day even having a high in the teens (19 on Jan. 8), parade day rose to the occasion, with a high of 62 degrees and no rain.

Jan. 17, 2011: There was no reason to be optimistic about the weather this year. Freezing temperatures filled the early weeks of January, then a bit of rain and highs in the 40s happened on parade day, with lows in the 20s.

Jan. 16, 2012: OK, I'll give you one more outlier: A high of 72 and a low of 56. And no rain or snow!

Jan. 21, 2013: Finally, here we are once again on MLK parade day in Tulsa. We've reached the 70s this month, and just had a weekend in the 60s, so what curveball does Mother Nature throw Tulsa for its holiday? Morning temperatures in the 20s, and a forecast high of 42 degrees today.

Well, at least there's no freezing rain like 2007.

Happy MLK Day!

--Althea Peterson

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Almanac

Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun
Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec

	Temperature		Precipitation
Date	High Temp	Low Temp	Total	Month to date	Historical average
1	44°	16°	0	0.00	0.05
2	59°	24°	0	0.00	0.11
3	57°	33°	0	0.00	0.16
4	68°	37°	Trace	0.00	0.21
5	69°	29°	0	0.00	0.26
6	66°	33°	0	0.00	0.32
7	59°	38°	0.05	0.05	0.38
8	51°	34°	0	0.05	0.44
9	44°	36°	0.01	0.06	0.51
10	62°	37°	0.07	0.13	0.57
11	54°	28°	0	0.13	0.64
12	44°	30°	0.25	0.38	0.70
13	55°	40°	0.01	0.39	0.76
14	°	°			0.83
15	°	°			0.89
16	°	°			0.95
17	°	°			1.02
18	°	°			1.09
19	°	°			1.16
20	°	°			1.23
21	°	°			1.31
22	°	°			1.38
23	°	°			1.46
24	°	°			1.53
25	°	°			1.61
26	°	°			1.69
27	°	°			1.77
28	°	°			1.85

TEMPERATURE

RAINFALL

SNOWFALL

Weather World

Follow Jerry Wofford on Twitter for updates during severe weather conditions.

Tulsa weather milestones of 2013 (as of Feb. 12)

Highest temperature: 70 on Jan. 11 (Record: 115 on Aug. 15, 1936)
Lowest temperature: 15 on Jan. 16 (Record: Minus-16 on Jan. 22, 1930)
Hottest month (average): 40.5 degrees in January (Record: 91.7 degrees on July 1980)
Coldest month (average): 40. 5 degrees in January (Record: 21.7 in January 1918)
Most snowfall (day): 0.1 of an inch on Feb. 12(Record: 13.2 inches on Feb. 1, 2011)
Most snowfall (month): 0.1 of an inch in February(Record: 22.5 inches in February 2011)
Most rainfall (day): 0.91 of an inch on Jan. 29 (Record: 9.27 inches on May 26-27, 1984)
Most rainfall (month): 1.54 of an inch in January (Record: 18.18 inches on September 1971)
Highest wind speed: 30 mph on Jan. 30
Previous day with any rain: Feb. 12
Previous day with 1 inch or more of rain: Oct. 17, 2012
Previous day with any snow: Feb. 12
Previous day with freezing temperatures: Feb. 12
Read regular updates on Oklahoma's unpredictable weather and learn more about meteorology from the Tulsa office of the National Weather Service.

>> Visit the main weather page
>> Send us your weather photos
>> Meet the forecasters

Contributors
Staff Writer Althea Peterson started writing for the Tulsa World in March 2007 after previous stops at the Norman Transcript in 2006 and the Oklahoma Gazette in 2005. She followed her older brother from rural Wisconsin (with a public school that never seemed to call snow days) to the University of Oklahoma, but did not follow his pursuit to study meteorology. However, she tries to find as many opportunities to report on the weather as possible.

Staff Writer Jerry Wofford came to the Tulsa World in 2010 from The Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kan. Originally from western Arkansas and a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, Jerry has lived in Tornado Alley his entire life and is one of those people who goes outside when the sirens go off.

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