Ticker for December 22, 2004

                
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December 22, 2004  December 22, 2004  December 22, 2004  December 22, 2004



Cold Snap Places Exclamation Point on Interesting Climate Year

Here's a news flash: it's cold, and getting colder. Wind chills
continue to edge down toward the zero-degrees-Fahrenheit mark as
cold air filters into the state. Wind chill values are updated
every fifteen minutes at:

http://www.mesonet.org/public/current.html
(click on the "Data Plots" section)

The bitter cold snap punctuates the end of a year that produced
relatively little memorable weather, but lots of interesting climate:

* May was the driest of Oklahoma's modern climate record, which
began in 1895.

* June and July were unseasonably wet and mild across almost all
of the state.

* In southwest Oklahoma, November was the wettest of the modern
climate record.

* November was the state's gloomiest (darkest) month since we've
kept track of such things with the Oklahoma Mesonet

* The winter months of November and especially December were
quite warm, this week notwithstanding

Sadly (for climatologists anyway) much of the exciting extrema
we've expounded on will get washed out of the state's annual
precipitation and temperature numbers. We'll finish with a year
closer to normal than to the extremes.

In other words, a wild ride of ups and downs left us about even
on the year. And that's the way things often work in Oklahoma:
a "normal" year will veil a bumpy twelve-month ride.

Tomorrow, by popular demand (and by "popular", we mean Mom), the
Ticker will reprise it's annual end-of-year poetry.