Ticker for May 9, 2022

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
May 9, 2022        May 9, 2022        May 9, 2022        May 9, 2022


SPOILER ALERT!




And that doesn't even look as bad as yesterday.



Yeah, Grandfield's 108 degrees is almost off the charts for this time of year. But
hey, it's not like we've never seen 108 degrees in the state this early...it's
happened twice before in the last 140 years. We also hit 108 degrees at Frederick
back on May 4, 2020, AND at the Altus Mesonet site back on May 8, 2011. So it's
not THAT unusual, right? Heck, the 107 degrees at Altus was the second highest
temperature ever recorded on a May 8 in Oklahoma history.

And don't get cocky, eastern Oklahoma. All that rainfall evaporating and sitting
around down by the surface evened out the differences quite a bit by giving you
some pretty nasty heat index values (while lowering SW OK's "feel like"
temperatures).



And don't look now, but lots of records could fall across the state once again
today; 106 degrees is the all-time highest temp to shoot for at Hollis back in
(you guessed it, but if ya didn't you probably weren't here 11 years ago) 2011.



So you take that heat, add winds of up to 40 mph and relative humidity values
down in the single digits...stir, add drought preventing green-up and you have
high fire danger. CRITICAL high fire danger in fact east of a dryline that will
move east across western OK this afternoon.



The temperatures will start to come down through the week, but still at above
normal levels.



Rain chances? LOL! Oh, I mean, sure, we will have periodic rain chances
throughout the week, including a slight chance of some severe storms tomorrow
across far SW OK. But our drought-busting rains appear over for awhile.



And I'd get used to this week's weather for a bit longer.





Well, maybe spring is over?

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