News - Blogs - Heres to 1897 The driest May in Tulsa history

Here's to 1897: The driest May in Tulsa history
Published: 5/31/2012 3:00 PM
Last Modified: 5/31/2012 3:00 PM

Thanks to our overnight storm Wednesday into Thursday, Tulsa will not have the driest May in recorded history. This photo is from Thursday morning. TOM GILBERT/Tulsa World

Couldn't beat the driest May in history, so this is a tribute.

1897, which acording to Wikipedia, was the first year that the term "computer" was used, remains the year that Tulsa's driest May occurred in:

Driest Mays in Tulsa history (rainfall in inches)

0.80: 1897
1.06: 1924
1.17: 1988
1.18: 2012 (as of 3 p.m. today)

1943 says hi - it received 18 inches of rain (no typo, that's eighteen) in May.

Since 1897 and 2012's Mays were so comparable for at least the first 30 days of the month, here's a few other notable things about Tulsa's 1897, as far as the weather goes:

30.22: Total rainfall in inches for the entire year, ranking 21st-driest of all time for Tulsa. 1956 is driest, with 23.24.

13.10: Total rainfall in inches for 1897's spring, which was actually one of the more wet springs for Tulsa, ranking 50th on record. Last year, 2011 recorded only 9.99 inches of rain in spring.

10.16: Total rainfall in inches for 1897's summer, one of the more dry summers in Tulsa history, ranking 59th.

2.51: The fourth-driest fall on record happened in 1897. In 1948, Tulsa only had 1.66 inches of rain in fall (aka "autumn"), which was the driest.

8.55: One of the wettest winters in Tulsa history... oh wait! This is actually 1897-1898. Remember that seasons in meteorology are as follows:

December-February: Winter
March-May: Spring
June-August: Summer
September-November: Fall

So perhaps, we should go with the 1896-1897 one...

4.27: The 48th-driest winter in Tulsa history. The driest was actually quite recent. 2005-06 had only 1.59 inches.

Wondering about snow and temperature records? Alas, 1897 was quite some time ago, so online National Weather Service records only date back to 1900 for snow and 1905 for temperature.

While I didn't want Tulsa to break this record (my garden would not have liked that), this is still quite impressive to have a record stand for so long.

May 1897: 115 years and counting!

--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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