Mesonet Ticker for February 20, 2025

                
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February 20, 2025  February 20, 2025  February 20, 2025  February 20, 2025


Normalish




25 degrees below normal, outside of summer, never looked so good! But here we go
again with another COLD record-breaking day. Or a record-breaking COLD day.

Either way, it's making me hot around the collar.

As an aside (this side...the other side of the pillow is cold), much like
quicksand and evil idols, growing up I thought ring around the collar would be a
bigger problem, but as far as I know I have never seen it around any of my
collars.

Oh, and running out of Calgon. That's never happened either.

But back to the cold weather, clear skies and snowpack up in NE OK allowed those
lows to plummet once again to record-breaking territory. In fact, if not for a
somewhat suspect -12 from Upper Spavinaw Port in 2021, that -7 at Foraker and
Vinita would be the lowest temperature ever recorded on a Feb. 20 dating back
to the 1880s.





Don't be sad if you're worried that will be the last of our records from this
cold snap, because today's highs will be in that mode as well.





And then we'll put the final nail in the coffin of this stretch with some
records tomorrow morning.



Those highs on Friday on that top map will actually be the final end of this
stretch, which continues to, uhhhhhh, stretch.



Friday looks manageable. Saturday not bad. Sunday good. Monday great.

Tuesday? Fantastic.





After this, 50s are the new 70s, so those 70s will be like 90s. Now come summer
(which starts March 18th), 90s will be the new 70s.

Let's go a bit farther out. CPC's spring outlook is none too kind for the
western half or so of the state, with above normal temps AND below normal
precip most likely, which then leads to drought development through that period.





It doesn't have to happen that way. Odds aren't greatly tilted, and they're
based off of a weak La Nina. Although impacts from La Nina and El Nino tend
to dampen quite a bit during the spring season, there are often still lingering
impacts. The caveat here is that it IS a weak La Nina, so the impacts are less
likely to occur, with higher variability. However, those impacts are still
more likely than not.

That will be important because we are seeing that dry spell continue without
significant precipitation relief.





I know we just had widespread snow and ice, but not much across those orange
areas on the map, and we do have a large part of the state in "Abnormally Dry"
D0 conditions on the Drought Monitor map, signalling areas in this case of
being in danger of drought development.



It might not seem like it, but we've been extremely lucky we've been so cold
over the last 2 months, or drought would be sprouting like weeds. The cure is
pretty simple. Rain (or snow or ice). It does look dry through the end of
February, however.





We need more Calg...I mean, rain!

Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climate Survey
gmcmanus@ou.edu
                

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