Ticker for March 22, 2001

                
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March 22, 2001     March 22, 2001     March 22, 2001     March 22, 2001



Strange Goings-On in Oklahoma Last Night

Yesterday was beautiful, but last night in Oklahoma was weird.
In fact, some Mesonet staffers have been trying to figure out exactly
what in the heck happened in parts of central and eastern Oklahoma.

Here are meteograms from four stations in central Oklahoma:






They all show something happening around 4 am.  At Norman, winds
strengthened for hours (actually waking up the Mesonet QA Manager)
until the pressure spiked and the winds weakened abruptly.  Chandler
shows a rapid pressure drop with a concurrent wind max.  Shawnee,
not to be outdone, shows *both*, while Spencer shows the pressure
drop and some irregularity in the temperature and dew point field.

All of these happened quite rapidly and sharply in central Oklahoma.
But, what's very interesting is the fact that this event was contained
to to certain stations.  Nearby Guthrie and Washington, for example,




show little or no evidence of such an event.


In eastern Oklahoma, a handful of stations show wierd oscillations
in the pressure and wind fields.

Eufaula observed a larger, more broad (in time scale) pressure crest,
which ushered in ssustained and very strong winds which persisted
through the rest of the morning.  This spike also has some reflection
in the temperature and dew point fields:




Two wind maxima show up in the Bristow meteogram around 3 am and 6 am.
Interestingly, these bracket (in time) the occurrence of a 5 am max
at Bowlegs, just 40 miles or so south of Bristow:




Perkins shows a small, but sharp and short-lived, drop in pressure
around 2 am (with a concurrent wind max), and a rise of similar
magnitude around 4:30 (with a concurrent weakening of winds):




The all-star meteogram of the morning was definitely Haskell, with
four, possibly five, rise-fall oscillations with concurrent wind
phenomena.



We're still looking at last night's events and will try to offer
more tomorrow.  Very, very interesting events.  If you have any
theories and/or ideas, the Ticker would love to hear them.