Ticker for March 3, 2021

                
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March 3, 2021      March 3, 2021      March 3, 2021      March 3, 2021


And I say it's alright




A lot of people (okay...me) keep remarking on how cloudy it was during February,
and really the whole first two months of 2021. Well, they're (okay...me're) not
far off. If you take a close look at the graph above, you'll notice we started
the year with a few more cloudy days, then hit that week-plus period late into
January when all the rain and snow, then the BIG dip (hey, I heard that!) during
our jaunt to the North Pole through much of February. The sun came out after
the big snows and it has more or less stayed a bit more on the sunny side since.

The map version of above for February shows just how much lower it was across the
state. Sunshine that is. Southeast OK was extra cloudy, and the Panhandle had a
bit more (that's also climatology, not surprisingly). I'll throw in a sunny
February for comparison; in this case, February 2016.







We can also take a look at the top graph (without our friends from Abbey Road)
for the entire year. Notice how the sunshine tends to be pretty chaotic until
right about the end of May, when the storm season tends to end and summer sets
in. The Sunshine stays elevated through about November before the big drop in
December.



One of the big differences as we go through the spring, however, is that when
it's sunny, it's gonna be much warmer because of the amount of solar radiation
increasing during the spring into the summer as the sun gets higher and higher
in the sky--or increasing sun angles.



Wow, in July we get a maximum solar radiation of about 1.21 jigowatts (not
really).

1.21 JIGOWATTS?? GREAT SCOTT!

Okay, back to the present. The point here is that after such a dreary, cold and
snowy February, we can better appreciate each sunny day. Definitely something
to look forward to.

But so is this.



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