The areas in green all saw at least one-tenth of an inch of rain by the end of Sunday, according to the Oklahoma Mesonet. The areas in the far east did receive more rain Monday morning.
Several friends in central Oklahoma posted pictures from the weekend of something that hasn’t been seen there in a while: Rain!
We got some rain here over the weekend too, but I’ll come back to that in a moment.
The rain winners from the weekend were those in south-central Oklahoma, specifically in Stephens, Jefferson and Cotton counties. They all got over three inches of rain.
A band of precipitation made its way north basically along Interstate 35 with the strip seeing over 3 inches from Texas to Kansas, as seen below from the Oklahoma Mesonet. That energy was stagnant much of the day Sunday before getting pushed eastward slowly, resulting in some nice weekend totals.
I saw photos of the stop-and-go traffic headed back north from the
thumping in Dallas Saturday, traffic that was made worse by the heavy rainfall.
And if there was any part of the state that needed it—well actually far southwest could have used some more. But the central and south-central area was in desperate need.
For example, the
Oklahoma Mesonet station at Ketchum Ranch recorded this weekend about one-third of the rain they’ve had all year. And they only had 4.11 inches this weekend.
Ketchum Ranch isn’t an outlier, either. The same could be said for several other Mesonet stations there, as well.
So, good news for them! Will it make much of a difference in the drought? Not likely. They will need several more days like that to make much of a difference.
For us in the eastern part of the state, rainfall amounts diminished significantly along the Highway 75 corridor and eastward. Tulsa International Airport recorded 0.48 inches Sunday night and early Monday morning.
While that’s good for a day, I found myself not jumping for joy but kind of just accepting it. Call it rain envy, but some heavy, prolonged downpours here would have been nice.
Because it probably won’t happen again for a while. We have
slight chances today and tomorrow before a 40 percent chance Wednesday. But after that, sunny and 70s. Beautiful October weather. Dry, but beautiful.
--Jerry Wofford
