News - Blogs - Its no longer a snowless winter barely

It's no longer a snowless winter, barely
Published: 2/13/2013 11:38 AM
Last Modified: 2/13/2013 11:38 AM

In case you forgot, this is what accumulating snow looks like. A group of students pose after playing a game in football in the snow at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond Wednesday. (AP Photo, The Oklahoman, Sarah Phipps)

Well, winter sure took its sweet time getting to Tulsa. And it didn’t even stick around long enough for us to see it.

Tulsa has officially (preliminarily) recorded snow in the 2012-2013 winter season. The measurement from the NWS office in Tulsa was, are you ready?! One-tenths of an inch. That’s 2.54 millimeters of snow. I think calling that a snow is being pretty generous, but at least it was deep enough to stick a ruler in.

We had a good day with some good rain Tuesday, but the warm layer was just too much for any kind of snow. It wasn’t going to happen here yesterday with temperatures in the upper 30s, lower 40s. That’s rain, of which a quarter inch was recorded Tuesday.

Other places around Oklahoma fared a little better, but it still wasn’t much to get excited about. Oklahoma City had 2 inches. Enid and Woodward had 3. Other places in far western Oklahoma had 6 inches. Totals from around here, according to storm reports at the Tulsa office, include 0.5 inches in parts of Ottawa, Nowata and Washington counties and 1.5 inches reported in Grainola in Osage County. There was as much as 3 inches reported there, but melting occurred through the evening.

Here is a satellite image from this morning that shows snow cover across western Oklahoma and the Texas Panhandle.

I was outside when the rain switched to snow in Tulsa last night and it was a nice sight to see. The snowflakes where I was were gigantic and it was pretty heavy at times. But, it was just too warm at ground level to do much sticking around.

With measurable snowfall in Tulsa recorded Tuesday, we have a winner in the secondary part of the Weather World Snow Contest. Trish Daniels guessed that the first measurable snowfall in Tulsa would be on Feb. 2. She was off by 10 days, but she was the closest of the more than 80 people who are participating in the contest. So, good work, Trish!

We have had trace amounts of snow in Tulsa earlier this winter, but Tuesday’s snow was the first that has actually been measurable by NWS staff.

While the snow in Tulsa was barely a thing, it was the latest measurable snow in a winter since the 1931-32 season. If you think this winter is bleak, the 1931-32 winter had its first snowfall in March of 1932, with trace amounts in November 1931 and February 1932. The total that winter was 0.3 inches.

For the main contest, however, it’s a little bleaker. The lowest guess for total winter snowfall we had was 0.7 inches from Katelyn at Jenks Middle School.

Our contest runs through the end of March, so there is still time for a late winter storm. It certainly could happen, but I won’t hold my breath.

If our total holds, this would be the fourth least snowiest winter on record, with only a trace in 1910-11 and no snow in 1900-01 and 1903-04.

Also, our two-year snow total is now 1.8 inches. It’s a good thing I got that snow shovel in 2011.

-- Jerry Wofford

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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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