News - Blogs - Rain in the midst of drought. Hooray I guess

Rain in the midst of drought. Hooray! I guess?
Published: 9/16/2011 7:00 AM
Last Modified: 9/15/2011 5:07 PM

There are several things that I like about this screenshot of our tulsaworld.com/weather page that I took at about 5 p.m. Thursday. One, we have nothing but rain forecast for the rest of the 5-day outlook. Two, that radar is filled with rain. Three, thank you, weather page sponsors!

I long for the days of D0 or less and still wonder if they'll create a new drought classification just for Oklahoma. Here, the dark red represents "exceptional drought" or D4, the bright red is "extreme drought" or D3, while that tiny bit of orange in the northeast corner is "severe drought" or D2.

Each week, the U.S. Drought Monitor examines our drought conditions and issues a report on Tuesday.

Then, that report becomes public Thursday morning.

Then, I blog about it Friday morning to report to you all that... there was virtually no change between this week's state report and last week's. Check it out here.

Thus, any and all rain that we received after Tuesday does not factor into Tulsa County's drought classification of D3. That's "extreme drought." Nor does the rain that hit many parts west of us factor into their drought classification just yet, which is D4. That's "exceptional drought."

The lucky Oklahomans of the northeastern corner of the state are still in D2, or "severe drought." The map to the right shows the statewide classifications.

So, the good news is that our drought is not getting worse, thanks to mostly lower temperatures (although we did get a day in the 100s on Tuesday), mild rain (with more expected later today!) and just the fact that we are in September now and not July or August.

Hopefully by next blog entry, Jerry or I will have much better news on the rain/drought front.

Come on, rain!

--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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