Mesonet Ticker for April 30, 2026

                
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May flowers?




Miley Cyrus might be able to buy herself flowers (old people, ask your grandkids),
but western Oklahoma is all out of cash. Errrrr, moisture. While we had massive
improvements across eastern Oklahoma thanks to very generous April rainfall
totals, western Oklahoma and the Panhandle have simply stayed mired in severe/
extreme (D2/D3) drought.



And those rains have been both significant...and insignificant.







Now you may be saying to yourself, "But Gary, if there's been so much rain
across the southeastern half of the state, why is their still drought their?"

Well first of all, it's "THERE," not "their." Nice thinking grammar! And second
of all, I just know there's some sort of medicine to where you'll stop calling
yourself ME in your brain. But I digress...

HERE'S why there's still drought across the southeastern half of the state.



Think of it this way (and watch the brain grammar)...it took a long time to
get into drought, it's gonna take a long time to get out of it. And remember,
it's not just the rainfall -or lack thereof- it's also the fact that since July,
we've been on a scorching pace setting temperature records. March was the
warmest on record. Winter was the warmest on record. July-March was the warmest
on record. January-April was the warmest on record. And so on and so forth. In
general terms, heat exacerbates (English to Okie translation: worsen) drought,
and it's definitely an ingredient of our current problem.

Now is it fixing to (Okie to English translation: about to) rain some more?
Well, as feared, the southerly-diving storm dove farther south and took our
rainfall chances with it. At least for most of us.



It might be until that second week of May where we get back into a rainy
pattern.



The good news there is that increased odds of above normal precipitation for
May could be significant, because that's our prime rainy season. In other
words, above normal MAY rainfall hits a bit different.

We'll see.

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

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