Ticker for October 11, 2004

                
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October 11, 2004   October 11, 2004   October 11, 2004   October 11, 2004



Recipe for a Feast

October rainfall is feast-or-famine for Oklahoma.  Climatologically,
its standard deviation of rainfall is 64.5% of the long-term average,
which is mathematics' way of saying "you get all or nothing in October,
Oklahoma".

Now, one typically has a feast on an occasion featuring a visitor from
a faraway place, and heavy October rainfall in Oklahoma often features
a visitor from the tropics.

To bludgeon the food metaphor to death (we're the Ticker, and that's
what we do), here are some ingredients for heavy October rainfall
in Oklahoma:

1. Deep, abundant source of moisture.  This time of year, the moisture
is typically provided by a tropical storm, sometimes from the Gulf,
and sometimes from the Pacific.

2. Some sort of quasi-stationary boundary draped over us or to our
south.

3. It helps to have an upper-level storm accelerating the flow of
moisture up and over this boundary.

These ingredients have been in place for a few days now in Oklahoma.
And, while it hasn't been a soaker of epic proportions, it fed up a
dish of widespread rainfall to a mostly-appreciative Sooner State.