Mesonet Ticker for July 9, 2026

                
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July 9, 2026       July 9, 2026       July 9, 2026       July 9, 2026


True 'dat




There are three truths in this world:

1. 4-way stops are an abomination
2. The left lane is not really fast
3. If you turn on the TV, there will be a "Harry Potter" movie on.

Oh, and 4. Numbered lists are dumb.

But there's another one us Okies (and you scalawags and ne'er do wells that have
migrated here) know very well...if it rains in the summer, you'll pay for it
later.

But it's a good thing, because air conditioning is better than drought. Here,
check these two maps. The first is the maximum Wet Bulb Globe Temperature from
yesterday. The WBGT is sorta like the heat index, but you take into account the
wind (which will lower the risk), and the sun (which will obviously increase the
risk). And of course the air temperature and humidity...the higher they are,
the more that increases the risk.



Wow, yesterday was bad. Bad bad bad bad bad. Did I say bad?

You know I'm bad, I'm bad, shamone, you know (Bad, bad, really, really bad)
And the whole world has to answer right now. Just to tell you once again who's
bad

NO! Now is not the time for songs. We were talking about paying for the rain.
Oh yeah, now check out the new Drought Monitor map for this week.



Coincidence? I think not. The heavy rains across the state eventually are used
by plants and transpired out to the air, and the soil moisture that was
replenished by those rains are eventually evaporated upward into the air as well.
There's just not as much evapotranspiration across those drought areas.

But still, the rain is better. Heck, it's raining right now for crying out loud!



There'll be lots of evaporating and transpiring today as well, so hang in there.

Speaking of rain, have you heard about what's going on in the equatorial Pacific?
Mother Nature went down to the Wal Marts and bought herself a "Super" El Nino
for later this year. In fact, the forecast now has it looking like possibly
the strongest on record. You can see those warm waters here. Well, a graphic
of them, at least.



And here's a graph of those temperature anomalies. The Nino 3.4 graph is key,
and it's already up above 1C, which is Moderate El Nino territory. And here you
can see the outgoing longwave radiation has central and east-central equatorial
Pacific, but increased over Indonesia. So more convection to the east, less to
the west...another El Nino sign.



The CPC prediction is still basically 100% El Nino through the end of the year,
and close to 100% as we go through winter.



The strength forecast shows a peak of about an 80+% chance of a "very strong"
El Nion as we get into the October-December time frame, and basically a 97%
chance of at least a "strong" event.



What's it mean? To quote John McClane: "Somebody's about to seriously (mess)
with this airport," except he didn't say "mess." In reality, the strength
doesn't necessarily mean stronger impacts, but it does increase the chances
of those typical El Nino impacts, like a wetter and milder cool season for
us here in the Southern Plains.

For us, better an El Nino than a La Nina, so we'll take what comes our way.

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

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