We want rain, not snow! In this Feb. 3 file photo, a plow truck is stuck on ramp to U.S. 169 in Tulsa. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World File
When I visited Seattle a few months ago, they were lamenting how cold and rainy their summer had been.
When I spoke to relatives from Oregon this weekend, they also said they were getting lots of rain.
So anyway, for those of you who are visiting this site from outside Oklahoma, please send us your rain and your cooler temperatures. Please. We need them (and want them) more than you (apparently) do.
But you can keep your snow. In honor of Jerry's recent blog on snow out east (read
here) and my blog a few days ago on snow impacting college football (photos
here), a few reasons why we do not want snow in Tulsa just yet:
1- Our earliest recorded (in the season) snow in Tulsa history was Oct. 7, 2000. So, we wouldn't be setting any new weather records anyway.
2- We received 14 inches in a 24-hour period back on Jan. 31-Feb. 1 this year. Perhaps you remember the impassable roads and closed schools?
3- Snow does
not equal rain, so it does
not cure drought! A meteorologist told me earlier this year that our dry weather also led to having very dry snow. The conversion rate for Tulsa's snow in February was about 20 inches of snow to 1 inch of rain. In other parts of the state, it was about 25 inches of snow to 1 inch of rain.
Speaking of rain, the U.S. Drought Monitor has now released their weekly drought report... and there's not much good news for Tulsa County unfortunately:
This is not all bad news, however. There are emerging areas statewide of D1 for moderate drought which first appeared last week. You can see them on the far east side of the state in beige. Orange is D2 for severe drought, bright red (including Tulsa County) is D3 for extreme drought, while those dark red areas are the highest classification: D4 for exceptional drought, which we are less and less of each week!
--Althea Peterson
PS: I promise to share much more Wisconsin native insight on snow as we delve deeper into winter.
