Ticker for January 10, 2022

                
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January 10, 2022   January 10, 2022   January 10, 2022   January 10, 2022


Drought de-Wormer




I remember talking about our weather being in the doldrums back in August, but at
least it was warm then! The ONE positive (work with me here, that was a tough
one) with this cold weather that Mother Nature decided to switch over to at the
dawn of 2022 is that we have less pressure on our drought situation due to
above normal temperatures. However, there is also less POSITIVE pressure on the
drought because it will Simply. Not. Rain. Or even snow or ice. As you can see
in the map above, it has now been since Oct. 10, 2021, since Kenton saw at least
a quarter-inch of rain. On that day, they received 0.21 inches of a dusty
rainfall on a day it reached 70 degrees.

That's bad.

Heck, it's been 91 days (let's be honest...wait, you be honest, I'll remain Gary,
but let's just call it 92 days) since they've had at least a tenth of an inch.



Wow, that map looks a lot better than the quarter-inch one, right? Well, before
we celebrate too much, let's recognize that the rain that boosted them over
the 0.1" mark didn't really amount to much more than a dust-settler for many
across northern and western Oklahoma. Proof? Look at the comparison between the
10-day rain map and the 60-day rain map.





SO things are not better across western and northern Oklahoma. And they're
gonna get worse before they get better, cold weather or not. How much worse,
hard to say. I do not see a big rain in the next 10 days, however, and maybe
for the next two weeks.







As luck (or DARNED the luck) would have it, I don't see much in the way of
unusually warm temperatures over the next 10 days either. What we look like
right now is December-lite...meaning lots of boring weather with occasional
cold fronts, but those will drop us down into the 20s and 30s for highs from
the 50s and 60s, instead of dropping us down into the 30s and 40s for highs
from the 70s and 80s.

I know, right? December was crazy warm! Not so much for January. Still, we've
seen worse.



We really do need a big pattern shift to come in and shake us up some. If it's
a blizzard or ice storm, just remember, I was AGAINST the cold weather.

Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
gmcmanus@mesonet.org