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September 21, 2022 September 21, 2022 September 21, 2022 September 21, 2022
Soiled
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/short-veryshort-SM.png
Hey, thanks for Ticking with me today! It's a big day in my world as I continue to
train for my annual swim across the Cimarron River up in NW OK. It's gonna be a
rough one because I'm told the riverbed is full of sand burrs.
So as our current drought stretches into month #13 for the long-term folks, and the
flashy flash drought rolls on past 101 days--not only with little rainfall but also
with tons of sun and extraordinarily high temperatures--obviously our soils are
gonna start to suffer. As you can see above from the USDA's reports, 82% of our
topsoils are considered short to very short of moisture, up 10 percentage points
from last week. Sadly, this ain't like the stock market where those percentage
points go up, you make money. And we can also see this in the Oklahoma Mesonet's
Percent Plant Available Water maps at various depths.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/4inch-PAW.png
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/16inch-PAW.png
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/32inch-PAW.png
At 82%, Oklahoma is now in the third worst shape in the country, behind Montana's
92% and Kansas' 84%. KS' soils in bad shape increased by 35% in one week as they
become the centerpiece for the dreaded death dome of heat. As that ridge of high
pressure camps over the center of the country, so too did the centerpiece of
the current drought, marking Nebraska, KS, and Oklahoma as an area of deepening
deficits...and disaster.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/soils-by-year.png
Now THAT'S a busy graph. What you see there is all the reports from the USDA
of short to very short topsoil moisture in Oklahoma for the last 12 years or
so. I've labeled the 2022, 2011, and 2012 values in the boxes, and you can see
at this point in time, only 2011 and 2012 had higher values of short to very
short soils. Now obviously those aren't drought years you want to be hanging
around with, but there you are. Also notice that both 2011 and 2012's values
started to plummet in the next couple of weeks back then. Yeah, I know that
sentence didn't make any sense, but if you made it this far, you know that very
little of what I say makes sense. It's even worse when it's typed out.
Anyway, I don't see a similar plummet for this year in the next couple of weeks.
Rain chances look pretty dim over at least the next 2 weeks.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/7day-rain-forecast.gif
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/sept28-oct4-outlooks.png
Yeah, that's not pretty. And we see on the temperature outlook for the end of
September and beginning of October that the above normal temperatures are
expected to continue, which will put more pressure on the soil moisture. And
while we will have an extended cooldown coming on Sunday into the middle of
next week, it will merely be "seasonable," and not the rain-cooled affair that
we need to see. Today, Friday and Saturday will be blazing hot, and we see
cool days for Thursday, later on Sunday and then on into the week.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/nws-norman-7day-planner.png
While our soils are suffering, our state's lakes are faring a BIT better, but
they're starting to slowly lose their levels (and we all know just how painful
that can be). As with the soils, these are nowhere close to where they were
in 2011-13, when water emergencies started to spring up across the state, but
we're just in month #13.
https://ticker.mesonet.org/archive/20220921/MonthlyReservoirStorage.png
Sooner or later, ONE of these cold fronts will bring us some rain. WIDESPREAD
rain, not just isolated parts of the state.
I'm kind of hoping we can fill up the Cimarron before I try to swim it. If not,
maybe they will at least mow it for me.
Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
gmcmanus@mesonet.org
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