Ticker for January 23, 2018

                
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January 23, 2018   January 23, 2018   January 23, 2018   January 23, 2018


Coming up ostrich eggs


Did ya have fun yesterday? If you said yes, best check the length of your nose.
I can tell you're joshing just by looking at yesterday's Mesonet maps.




Admit it, the fissures in your lips are just starting to recede, and your hair
(yes, I'm jelly) took a break from sanity yesterday. After that lovely weekend,
sarcasm intended, all we can do now is go back and look at the rainfall
statistics and wonder how it impacted those areas already desiccated by drought.
Now it did rain across far SE OK as a line of severe storms passed through.



But as you can see, western OK was left high and dry and dusty. Today will mark
the 105th consecutive day in a row (THAT PHRASE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TICKER
REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT) that the Mesonet sites at Woodward and Hooker have
recorded precipitation. ANY precipitation. And only a bit of snow melt that
amounted to a hundredth of an inch on Jan. 13 prevented Beaver from its 109th
consecutive moisture free day. The rainfall total map from that period has lots
of goose eggs on it.



Over that 105 day period, 7 of the Mesonet's 120 sites have a tenth of an inch
or less, 30 have an inch or less, and all but 3 are in single digits. Congrats
to Valliant (10.58 inches), Mt. Herman (10.59 inches) and Cloudy (11.41 inches)
for leading the pack.

The "days without at least" maps are sad, but they do have each other to cling
to, so we won't have to add "lonely" to complete that phrase.




The million dollar question is, when will it rain again? Considering we've now
asked that for *105 CONSECUTIVE DAYS* now, what's the point? The next 7 days?
Not looking good.



After that, it's anybody's guess, but CPC attempts to give us hope with a
8-14 day outlook map that shows increased odds for above normal precipitation.



But in swoops the Canadians with their long range model output to destroy
those hopes with basically a ZERO chance of seeing rain accumulating to about
an inch through Feb. 7.



That's alright, what do they know? A Canadian team hasn't even won the Stanley
Cup since Montreal did it in 1993. We're sure to get a good snow and/or rain
and/or ice storm in here before too long, right?

Wait, we've decided that goose eggs no longer apply. After 100 days, we go to
Ostrich eggs.



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