Ticker for May 4, 1999

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
May 4, 1999        May 4, 1999        May 4, 1999        May 4, 1999


An Honest Thank You

I hope this issue of the Ticker finds all of you safely after a long,
moving, and terrifying day in the meteorology and emergency management
communities of Oklahoma.  Many man-hours have already been dedicated to
the tragic events of the last 24 hours, and many are yet to come.

For what it is worth, this young author thinks the forecasting,
dissemination and response to the events has been exemplary, and many
persons owe their health to one or more of these facets.  If human
effort could somehow be amassed to stop the inevitable, I'm sure
Oklahoma's meteorological and EM communities would have found a way
to do so yesterday.


Dryline passage

Oklahoma's skies west of I-35 have become very dusty due to very
gusty winds and low relative humidities to the west of a dryline.

The current Mesonet wind speed (with gust values) is updated every
fifteen minutes at:




An Even Better Example of Yesterday's Ticker Topic

The topic of yesterday's Ticker
http://ticker.mesonet.org/select.php?mo=05&da=03&yr=1999
was the backing winds in south central
Oklahoma.  Shortly after the Ticker was released, the atmosphere
provided an even more dramatic example in south-central Oklahoma.

Several maps and meteograms pertaining to yesterday's events have been
archived in a special Ticker section, and more will be added over the
coming days as time permits.
https://content.mesonet.org/ticker/archive/19990504/

Between 3:00 pm and 6:00 pm, the station pressure dropped dramatically
at several Mesonet stations in Grady County (4.1 mb at Ninnekah).  Winds
in the region backed noticably, also.  Several of yesterday's terrible
storms initiated just west of this area.

A more thorough meteorology is contained in the meteograms at Chickasha
and Ninnekah.  Notice the backing winds and falling pressures at each
of thse stations in the mid-afternoon.