MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
April 6, 2023 April 6, 2023 April 6, 2023 April 6, 2023
Hey to Death Valley
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/goodwell-aridity.png
I don't know what it's going to take to get folks to sit up and take notice of
just how dry it has been in the Oklahoma Panhandle over the last 15 months or so.
Many of my other big campaigns have also fizzled, but I'm gonna try anyway.
Make "Roadhouse" the national movie? Failed.
Make Cherry Pop-Tarts the state food of Oklahoma? Failed.
Grow hair back on the head of bald state climatologists? Failed.
Bring sexy back? Well, Justin Timberlake beat me to that one.
The only thing I know to do to bring attention to Goodwell's (and the Panhandle)
plight (Goodwell's Plight was my band's name in 8th grade) is to try and
startle you.
Hey, I could have shown you my picture, but I chose the lesser of two evils. So
you go back to Jan. 1, 2022, and take the rainfall totals through yesterday for
some of the most notorious dry places in the U.S. and that's what you get above.
Let's spell it out a bit more in the table below.
-***-
Jan. 1, 2022-April 5, 2023 Rainfall
Location Accumulation (in.) Normal (in.) Departure (in.)
Death Valley, CA 3.18 3.34 -0.16
Las Vegas, NV 3.57 5.99 -2.42
Needles, CA 5.83 6.35 -0.52
Goodwell, OK 7.11 19.68 -12.57
Phoenix, AZ 8.66 9.79 -1.13
-****-
Yikes! Goodwell is 12.57 inches down since the beginning of 2022. That's about
36% of normal. What grows in the desert? Well, cactus, right? So you can't grow
much in Death Valley. It's just not done (unless you use irrigation). It's the
Mojave Desert, for crying out loud. So if you can't grow anything with 3.18
inches, what can you grow with an additional 3.98 inches, to get you up to
7.11 inches like in Goodwell?
Thistle, maybe? It's not like much of the Panhandle and far NW OK is faring
any better, and yes, I'm too riled up to go back and see if that has proper
subject-verb agreement! I aren't write good sometimes.
Did you even know that Goodwell broke the all-time lowest annual rainfall record
for Oklahoma in 2022 with 6.48 inches of rain, besting Regnier's 6.53 inches
from 1956? With records dating back to the 1880s?
Well I hope you do now. The newest U.S. Drought Monitor is full of bad news for
the NW half of the state, once again largely to the north and west of I-44. We
asked for an increase in D4-Exceptional drought in several areas, and the
national author this week obliged.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/20230404_ok_trd.png
The yellow areas on this map show where we increased drought severity by one
category this week.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/1week-change-DM.png
The impacts are obvious. Look at the current Relative Greenness map from our
OK-FIRE program. Basically comparing how green things are now vs. the greenest
they've been for the past 10 years, Goodwell (and Hooker) is sitting at a great
big goose egg...0%! You can easily see the OK winter wheat crop from SW OK through
NC OK where it has greened up, and much of eastern OK with all that rainfall
and some warmth. But look at Osage County, again to the north and west of I-44,
looking similar to the Panhandle.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/current.RG.png
For comparison, look at where we were last year at this time. Much less green,
but we were in drought PLUS it was much cooler than normal the first 3 months
of the year. However, the Panhandle was in better shape then for the most part.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/RG-april5-2022.png
Well what do we have coming in? A little bit of rain up there in far NW OK,
perhaps? Doesn't look like much, but allow me to do some ciphering for you,
courtesy of the Jethro Bodine school of math (youngsters, google).
Aught from naught is still naught, but 0.1 is greater than naught.
In other words, we'll take whatever we can get, because it's better than
nothing!
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/7day-rain-forecast.gif
If you're hanging out with Death Valley and Phoenix, you can't be too choosy
when offered a drink, right?
Maybe afterwards we'll have even better chances. The outlook is hopeful, and
sometimes hope is all you got.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20230406/april11-15-outlooks.png
So sit up and take notice, there are folks hurting mightily for rain. They're
easy to find, just go to I-44 and head north and/or west.
Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
gmcmanus@mesonet.org
==================================================
The OCS/Mesonet Ticker
https://ticker.mesonet.org/
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Ticker
or for questions about the Ticker or its content
Phone or Email the Ticker Manager at OCS
Phone: 405-325-2253 Email: ticker@mesonet.org
---------------------------------------------------
-C- Copyright 2024 Oklahoma Climatological Survey
===================================================
|
Share
Tweet
