News - Blogs - What drought

What drought?
Published: 3/21/2012 12:25 PM
Last Modified: 3/21/2012 12:25 PM

A driveway off of Highway 11 near Sperry is covered with water during rainstorms and flooding near Tulsa on Tuesday, March 20, 2012. JOHN CLANTON/Tulsa World

Lightning rips through the sky behind the Kimberly Clark plant in Paris, Texas Monday, March 19, 2012 as severe thunderstorms moved through North East Texas dumping inches of rain and heavy winds along the way. (AP PHOTO/The Paris News, Sam Craft)

Here is the satellite image from 10:30 or so Monday morning. You can see extensive cloud cover over most of Oklahoma. That's the rain. (NOAA)

Well, at least your garden will look great this spring, right?!

Speaking of spring, how incredibly fitting that the first day of spring would be so spring-like.

As I’m sure you’re well aware, it rained a little bit this week. Like, it rained a whole lot this week.

The last time we had this much rain in a three-day period (And I’m including today, despite the fact we could get more) was August 10, 11, 12 of last year: 4.5 inches. So far, we’re at 4.28 inches for March 19, 20, 21. That August total includes a one-day rainfall amount of 3.44 inches in Tulsa. The one-day high total from this week was 2.81 inches Monday.

All that rain in Tulsa means flash floods on streets, which we saw. Other parts of eastern Oklahoma had in excess of 7 inches for the storm total. That also causes flash floods, obviously.

And river flooding. Most of that flooding wasn’t severe (especially compared to the records set last year) and it has already started to recede.

It was impressive in some places. Bird Creek near Sperry rose 20 feet in 24 hours. And it has fallen 12.65 feet in the last 17 hours. The Neosho River near Commerce rose more than 15 feet in 36 hours up to the moderate flood stage, where it still is.

But, we’re still in drought conditions in northeast Oklahoma from our brutal summer. That has really started to diminish over the past few months, but the ground is still thirsty. Tomorrow’s drought condition update will include Monday’s rainfall, but not all of Tuesday’s. Still, it will be interesting to see how that changes.

What won’t change much on the drought map is the Panhandle. Poor Panhandle. While they got just a tiny amount of rain out there, it won’t matter much.

So, you’ve heard about the rain (and if you want more, read my story from today’s paper here). What we haven’t talked about is the severe weather. There were tornado warnings in northeast Oklahoma Monday!

There were favorable conditions in southeast Oklahoma for the formation of severe storms, some that could have produced tornadoes. A front cooled the air in and around Tulsa and took us out of the tornado equation, but some of those storms did rotate enough to cause concern for NWS forecasters later in the evening.

In fact, Amy Jankowski said NWS surveyors were out near Cedarville, Ark., right across the border, to look at storm damage there to determine if it was a tornado Monday night. There were apparently about 15 trees between 1 and 2 feet in diameter that were uprooted or broken off there. Other trees were reported down in Roland and a barn was blown into a house in Muldrow.

Most of the heavy, convective bands of rain are east of us now, but you can’t rule out a shower over today or tomorrow.

All this will FINALLY move out just in time for a beautiful sunny and warm weekend. So, shake off that cabin fever and enjoy it.

--Jerry Wofford

Reader Comments

Show: Newest First

Learn About Our Comment Policy

To post comments on tulsaworld.com, you must be an active Tulsa World print or digital subscriber and signed into your account.

To sign in to your account, go to tulsaworld.com/signin.
To activate your print subscription for unlimited digital access and to post comments, go to tulsaworld.com/activate.
To purchase a subscription, go to tulsaworld.com/subscribe.

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.

Subscribe to this blog

Temperature
High Temp:	(Example: 45)
Low Temp:	(Example: 45)
Temperature Date:	(Example: 1/1/2011)

Precipitation
Total:	(Example: '.01)
Month to date:	(Example: '.01)
Normal month to date:	(Example: '.01)

2/2013	1/2013	12/2012	11/2012	10/2012	9/2012
8/2012	7/2012	6/2012	5/2012	4/2012	3/2012
2/2012	1/2012	12/2011	11/2011	10/2011	9/2011
8/2011	7/2011	6/2011

Your bookmark will appear on your Profile page. Please give it a title, and short description so that visitors to your page will understand where the bookmark leads.
Bookmark Title :

Bookmark Text :