Here is the drought condition as of Aug. 6. Look for great improvements next week.
Don’t let today’s drought monitor update give you cause for despair. It’s already outdated.
For once, we can all be jealous of the Panhandle. Wednesday evening and overnight rains there dropped more than an inch across much of the regularly drought-stricken part of our state. Beaver had 3.07 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Beaver! They have 12.25 inches of rain at the Oklahoma Mesonet site there, which is actually put it
above the yearly average. Three inches of rain overnight will do wonders.
But according to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor, it’s still a desolate, dry wasteland.
The most severe category of drought
actually expanded in the Oklahoma Panhandle this week. The D4 category went from about 1.4 percent of the state to 4.5 percent this week, all of that D4 expansion in the Panhandle.
And now is the part of the program where we address the biggest caveat of the weekly drought monitor. The cutoff for conditions to be considered for the Thursday morning update is Tuesday morning. So Wednesday’s rain, and even the rain that parts of the state got Tuesday, are not counted in this drought update. Here is rainfall in just the last 24 hours.
That means that in next week’s update, the Panhandle should hopefully shed some of that nasty mud-red color.
The rest of the state is largely unchanged from last week to this. Northeast Oklahoma is literally unchanged. Parts of north-central Oklahoma showed improvement while southeast expanded the abnormally dry category, the yellow light for drought.
All of that is a great improvement compared to a year ago, when 100 percent of the state was in at least D2 and two years ago when 64 percent of the state was in D4.
So Oklahoma is looking on the up and up, which is a really strange thing to say in August and July. But travel with me for minute up the Arkansas River to Kansas. I’ve written about their bounty of rain a few times recently, but this tangent will look at their drought update.
Kansas, especially along the Oklahoma border, has seen a really nice amount of rain in the past month. Wichita had more than 13.5 inches of rain since July 1. It’s rained there
every day this month, which I’d like to point out again is August. So at least the south should be drought free, right? Nope.
The state has shown great improvement in the last month, but a quarter of the state is still in D4 with half the state in some drought category. It shows just how hard it can be to really bust a drought, not just break it.
But more rain is forecast for much of the central United States, with eastern Kansas the center over the next seven days with 4.2 inches forecast for parts. Oklahoma should also see some of that rain in the next seven days. Hopefully this drought relief will keep charging ahead this month. Checking my calendar again... and yes, it's really August.
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