Ticker for August 9, 2006

                
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August 9, 2006     August 9, 2006     August 9, 2006     August 9, 2006


On Today's Date: Record Snowfall in Panhandle

According to OCS's daily records reminder, there are several interesting
extremes today in Oklahoma history.

For example, the record warmest low temperature for today apparently
comes from Woodward, where in 1896 the morning temperature cooled to a
crisp 98F.

Additionally, on Aug 9, 1951, Regnier and Herd (in the panhandle and in
northeast Oklahoma, respectively) both observed a trace of snow.

Huh?

Well, that's in the record, so it must be true, right?

These historical "extremes" illustrate a point about historical data.
There are a few billion numbers running around in the record and some
of them are bound to be wrong. And, despite what we might tell our
kids, just being old doesn't necessarily make you correct.

The Woodward observation is, of course, not true. All neighboring
stations recorded lows around 70. In fact, that thermometer, or its
observer, had issues all through August 1896.

The snow is a different story. For a relatively fleeting duration
of the climate record (mostly the 1950s), snow observations expanded
to include all frozen precipitation. The phantom "snow" in Oklahoma
on August 9, 1951 were welcome pea-sized hailstones that accompanied
the even-more welcome thunderstorms on that day.

Correcting these anomalies in the climate record is a tedious
process, but it is done.