Ticker for July 16, 2010

                
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July 16, 2010      July 16, 2010      July 16, 2010      July 16, 2010


A Quick Tick from a Hick from the Sticks

I received a question yesterday about 80-degree dewpoints and just how rare are
they, and are they a "once in a lifetime" occurrence? Well, I recently wrote
about the Oklahoma Mesonet all-time high dewpoints:

Top-10 Highest Mesonet Dewpoints (degrees F)

Broken Bow	7/28/1995	87.4
Bixby    	6/19/1996	87.1
Bowlegs  	7/09/1995	86.8
McAlester	7/17/1994	86.8
Cloudy   	7/28/1995	86.8
Broken Bow	7/03/1996	86.3
Cookson 	7/28/1995	86.1
Butler  	8/01/1996	85.9
Wilburton 	7/16/1994	85.8
Antlers 	7/28/1995	85.8

As you can see, 80 degrees is not even close to the extreme. How rare? Well, it's
not common, but the Oklahoma Mesonet has recorded a dewpoint of 80 degrees or
higher 2244 times since 1994. If you consider there have been ~115 stations
up and running for 16.5 summers now, then registering a dewpoint over 80
degrees is fairly rare indeed. But definitely not a once-in-a-lifetime event.

And other parts of the country see this fairly regularly as well. Consider Iowa,
where the corn starts to transpire right about now in mid-summer. As noted by
a colleague:

" Yesterday, at Newton, Iowa, amongst the transpiring corn fields, the dewpoint
got up to 88F, with a temp of 95F, resulting in a heat index of 128 !  Now
that's dangerous!"

So maybe we should be glad we grow wheat instead of corn. After all, who would
want to sing this:

"OOOOk-lahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain,
And the wavin' CORN can sure smell sweet, When the wind comes right behind the
rain"??????

Gary McManus
Associate State Climatologist
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
(405) 325-2253
gmcmanus@mesonet.org