Mesonet Ticker for November 12, 2026

                
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November 12, 2026  November 12, 2026  November 12, 2026  November 12, 2026


Mole!




Just when I thought I was (on the way) out, THEY PULL ME BACK IN! Continuing with
the movie theme (duh, it's me!), this is sort of like Thunderdome..."Two counties
enter, one county leaves."

I desperately want to use "Did you say 'yutes'?" but I can't figure out where it
fits in, NOR can I figure out if I punctuated that quote correctly, either.

DAMMIT JIM, I'm a climatologist, not a grammaticist!

So while we've had steady reduction in a good portion of western and central
Oklahoma over the last month-plus, eastern Oklahoma continues on the drought
roller coaster with some pitiful rainfall maps over the last four months or so.









Wait, over 13 inches in the far western Panhandle, and less than 4 inches in
far southeast Oklahoma over the last 120 days? What devilry is this (thanks,
Boromir...remember, we're talking movies here, not the books). And over this
time frame, dating back to mid-July, far SE OK is down nearly 12 inches, and
it's not much better as you go north from there.

The lake levels are indicative of longer-lived drought down that way as well.



The fun never seems to stop, does it? Would YOU like to track drought in
Oklahoma? You enjoy throwing up every 5 minutes, Claude?? I thought so.

Well, help is on the way for some according to the latest forecast rainfall
through the weekend, but maybe not for those hard-hit areas across eastern
Oklahoma.



There's always next week.



How about we check in on our good friend, Bob, the "Super" El Nino.

What about Bob, you say? Well, he's officially "very strong" now, having reached
the necessary 3-month sea surface temperature anomaly threshold above 2.0C for
the August-October period.

Three-month period	Observed RONI	Classification
------------------------------------------------------
MJJ (May–July)              +1.0°C         Moderate
JJA (June–August)           +1.4°C         Moderate
JAS (July–September)        +1.7°C	   Strong
ASO (August–October)        +2.0°C         Very strong

And remember, "very strong" is the official scientific term, and "super" is the
colloquial version.

CPC's strength thresholds are:
- Strong: +1.5°C to less than +2.0°C
- Very strong: +2.0°C or higher
- Historic: +2.5°C or higher, exceeding the previous record

The chances to reach that "historic" value during either the October-December
or November-January periods at about 60%, which is down from about 83% from the
October outlook.

Meanwhile, CPC still assigns:
- 100% probability of a very strong El Niño during OND.
- 96% probability during NDJ.
- 79% probability during DJF.

So the forecast hasn't substantially backed away from an exceptionally strong
event. It's backed away from the confidence that this event will break the
record.



My interpretation: CPC is still expecting an extraordinary El Niño, but the
forecast distribution has shifted downward enough to make a new record
a bit less certain.

And for Oklahoma's winter outlook, I wouldn't attach much importance to whether
the eventual RONI peaks at +2.3 or +2.6. Both represent a powerful ENSO forcing,
and the North American atmospheric response isn't going to change dramatically
simply because the index crosses an arbitrary record threshold.

Remember, the strength of an El Nino doesn't mean the typical impacts will be
stronger, but that the typical impacts will be more likely. Now one could infer
that making the typical impacts stronger, but we're splitting hairs here (and
you know I don't have enough of those to spare!).

I also believe we've already seen a significant impact from the El Nino event,
given out tropical Pacific connection we've seen this fall. No, we haven't
had southern-track storm systems coming through every few days, but enough
to make the realized impacts, uhhhhhh...realized.

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

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