Mesonet Ticker for March 31, 2026

                
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March 31, 2026     March 31, 2026     March 31, 2026     March 31, 2026


March Madness




I've had some really genius ideas in my day (when that day was, we're all still
wondering). Like, how about instead of toilet paper coming in sheets, how about
in glove form? Two-ply, although I like about 10-ply. Hmmmm?

And how about make EVERY lane on I-35 the left lane? So nobody can drive in ANY
lane on I-35 unless they're passing. Hmmmm?

How about, have May in March? Hmmmm?

Well, I'll never get the first two done, but darned if we aren't getting the last
one. March will finish as the warmest on record, with a preliminary statewide
avg. temperature of 60.2F-plus, meaning that's through March 30 with another very
hot, record-breaking day to go. That'll top 2012's measly 50.9F.

2012, what a loser! Ha!

And to put a punctuation point on our record, we're ending with record warmth on
March 31. Already we have shattered our record warm minimum temperatures this
morning per the Mesonet low-temp map.





In fact, those 71s at Blackwell, Cherokee, and Guthrie (OXFORD COMMA BE DARNED!)
tie for the highest minimum temperature on record for a March 31 in Oklahoma
(Bixby, 71, 1946).

Heck, yesterday's 98 at Beaver was the highest temperature ever recorded for a
March 30 in Oklahoma (old record: Tipton, 97, 1940).



You kidding me, Beaver? You think you're Phoenix? You think you're in the
Desert Southwest??

We're fresh off our warmest winter on record, our warmest February on record,
and now our warmest March on record. Slap a 60.2+ on the end of this graph and
you can see...yeah, March is getting warmer.



Shoot (I'm out of hecks), today's highs are gonna be on the ridiculous side
as well.





It doesn't help that we had a heat burst right around midnight in west-central
OK, with Weatherford reaching 84F right around that time.



March is gonna be somewhere around the 20th-driest as well, so we do need rain.
With all the heat, you know that means fuel for severe storms. Today is gonna
be a bit bumpy out west.







But Wednesday looks like that could be bumped up a notch.









What's it mean? Well, other than the bad stuff, which is often unavoidable if
you want rain during spring in Oklahoma...it means, uhhhhhhhh, rain. Just
sticking with what's expected to fall the next couple of days...not bad. Not
great, but not bad.



More rain is expected later in the week, which really bump those totals up.



We'll keep our fingers crossed on that one.

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

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