Days below 32 this cold season, via Oklahoma Mesonet
I don’t think my dog realizes how cold it is when she wants to get up and go outside about 6 a.m. I don’t have fur, so when she wants go outside and it’s 26 degrees, I’m a little chilly and hesitant to come out from the pile of blankets under which I’m huddled.
That was the low temperature we hit Monday morning.
When was the last time we were at or below 26 degrees? Look back to Feb. 12, when it was 16 degrees in Tulsa. You could have had a full pregnancy term between then and now. Mazel tov!
But it’s already been a chilly fall here. October was 1.1 degrees below normal (but November is 2.1 degrees above normal, thanks to a couple days with temps
well above normal).
The first hard freeze of the cold season -- when temperatures drop to 28 or below -- occurred Oct. 27, more than two weeks earlier than normal and the earliest since 2000, when Tulsa hit 28 on Oct. 9. To see an earlier hard freeze (Oct. 9 is kind of an outlier…), you have to go back to 1957. In fact, Tulsa has only been at 28 degrees or below in October 12 times going back to 1906.
This morning was below freezing and the forecast for the overnight low is below freezing, so it could be four days in a row of temperatures below freezing, which hasn’t occurred since January.
Last October was above normal and the first hard freeze of last winter wasn’t until Nov. 17.
Areas of northern Oklahoma have been in the lead with freezing temperatures this cool season, even ahead of the icy tundra in the Panhandle (poor Panhandle…). Nowata has seen lows below freezing 13 times this cool season. Bristow has had 12 days with lows below freezing.
The pattern we’ve seen recently has been a cold front about every week that drops temps drastically and they slowly creep up, but not to where they were before another cold front comes in and knocks them further.
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center’s latest 10-day and 2-week outlook has all of Oklahoma with high probability of above-average temperatures, though the forecast has temperatures near normal in the National Weather Service forecast. But that normal is highs in the 60s and lows in the upper 30s/low 40s. So, that’s not terrible weather.
Actually, it’s kind of terrible. The terrible part, as we pointed out
today, is how dry it is. These cold fronts that drop the temperatures down every week or so have been dry and disappointing.
--Jerry Wofford
