News - Blogs - Is everyone else really receiving all of Tulsas and northeastern Oklahomas rain

Is everyone else really receiving all of Tulsa's and northeastern Oklahoma's rain?
Published: 2/16/2012 12:27 PM
Last Modified: 2/16/2012 12:56 PM

In this Oklahoma Mesonet map showing the past seven days' rainfall, no jedi mind trick is necessary. This is not the rainfall you are looking for. The drought will go about its business. Move along (to an area other than northeast Oklahoma), rain. Move along.

I once asked if Tulsa had rain repellant.

I will ask Tulsa National Weather Service meteorologists the scientific, statistical questions, of course, but sometimes, after watching the radar's rain bypass the Tulsa area one-too-many times, I just had to ask. Maybe it was because we were in a big city compared to the surrounding rural areas?

"There really isn't any correlation between cities and a lack of rainfall or vice versa," said weather service meteorologist Karen Hatfield. "It's more a factor of personal perception as anything."

Everyone from Tulsa to Arkansas in the Tulsa NWS' coverage area, rural and urban alike, thinks that storms are falling apart before they reach their own areas, Hatfield said.

But, perhaps we northeastern Oklahomans actually do have a reason to complain. Perhaps we northeastern Oklahomans really are the have-nots in this precipitation free for all that we've been seeing forecast lately. Why does the western part of the state get more than 5 inches, when Tulsa receives about 1 inch?

And that leads directly into this week's state drought report, courtesy of the U.S. Drought Monitor and the Oklahoma Climatological Survey:

That subtle change you are probably squinting to notice is in Pawnee County. Let me make it more obvious with a gif image:

Why? Gary McManus, associate climatologist with OCS, said the lack of statewide changes is because liquid precipitation levels (aka what the snow melts into) were about a half-inch to an inch statewide. Not enough to make a dent in the drought classifications.

But Pawnee County's big drop? Here's McManus' take:

"Lone Chimney Lake in Pawnee County is the main potable water supply for 16,000 people in the surrounding area. Pawnee Rural Water District 2 officials say it's the lowest they've seen the lake in 32 years, and managers at the lake were worried the water supply would be gone by May 1."

While we may sometimes just be imagining the radar's rain avoiding our humble corner of the state, McManus also assures us via these maps that we are indeed the one area of the state that the rain is bypassing:

The impact of not having normal rainfall for months will be much more noticeable during the warmer months, McManus said. There is hope for change, however, if La Niña's effects fade, as Jerry noted in yesterday blog entry here.

-- Althea Peterson

PS: Track Tulsa's weather milestones of the year with the updated milestone listing on the right side of the blog. Find out when the last time Tulsa had freezing or triple-digit temperatures, significant snowfall or significant rainfall, as well as the coldest and hottest temperatures by day and month.

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

Precipitation
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Month to date:	(Example: '.01)
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