News - Blogs - Expert mode Spot the Oklahoma drought map differences and an odd radar pattern

Expert mode: Spot the Oklahoma drought map differences, and an odd radar pattern
Published: 12/15/2011 1:26 PM
Last Modified: 12/15/2011 1:27 PM

The U.S. Drought Monitor mapped the statewide drought situation for Dec. 6 and Dec. 13. Good luck spotting the differences.

If you enjoyed last week's game of "spot the drought map differences," this week's will be especially challenging.

So set the clock to 30 seconds (no cheating!) and look at the two maps to your right, or the larger versions below!

First, last week's from Dec. 6:

And now, this week's for Dec. 13:

30 seconds are up! If they aren't, I want you to stop looking anyway, because I'm afraid that both I and the U.S. Drought Monitor are playing a cruel joke on you for even asking.

Gary McManus, associate state climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, said they requested no changes to any of the drought classifications statewide because there was not significant rainfall, nor anything to worsen the drought conditions.

Now I feel guilty about my cruel joke, so here's something much cooler:

This is from our Tulsa World weather page (which you can view here), which has a really cool radar displayed. This particular image is from just before 5 p.m. on Nov. 14 when some isolated showers moved through the downtown area.

I have not seen a radar image like this before, but as noted in a previous blog, the radar image has been known to deceive you when it comes to precipitation (read more on that here).

Tulsa National Weather Service meteorologist Karen Hatfield assures me that we aren't getting hurricanes or just spiral storms in the Tulsa area. She said it appeared to be a momentary problem with the radar image itself.

"Each ring is indicative of an elevation angle of the radar beam in the volume scan," writes Hatfield. "I'm not sure if you're looking at just the lowest elevation angle there or if it is composite reflectivity, but I'm guessing it's composite since the rings wouldn't appear that way on just the lowest elevation angle."

Apologies again for the U.S. Drought Monitor tease, but at least our drought isn't getting worse statewide.

--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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