Ticker for January 5, 2023

                
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January 5, 2023    January 5, 2023    January 5, 2023    January 5, 2023


Persistence




When weather is boring like this, at least in our neck of the woods, our thoughts
often drift to things more important--our family and friends, helping those
that need help the most, and Pop-Tart flavors.

Oh, there are those scallywags that favor strawberry, but those are common
people that are accepting of mediocrity. You know, people that like
watching reruns of "Gilligan's Island." Lovers of Velveeta and ketchup on their
spaghetti. And then there are those folks that like completely made-up flavors,
like Frosted Confetti, or Eggo Frosted Maple (yes, that's an actual flavor...
proof below!). Lunatics, mostly, and people from Indiana. No, I don't know why
Indiana, either. I'm not from there!



And then there are the just plain old unfrosted varieties. You can find the fans
of those wandering around the mall asking where the Waldenbooks went, and letting
everybody go ahead of them at 4-way stops even through they were there first.

But then there are Cherry Pop-Tarts, or as they're also knows...the Elixir of
Life. They're like a hot cup of coffee in your hands on a frigid day, or hot
buttered popcorn at a movie. They bring joy to the joyless, and can cure most
of life's ills, their flavor like that first burst of rain in the spring that
soothes the parched earth, albeit with a crunchy frosted shell.



It says it right there...DELICIOUS FLAVOR! In. Every. Bite.

Why would they lie?

The people that like Cherry Pop-Tarts?

(WARNING, CLUMSY SEGUE ALERT!)

Now THOSE people are hard to stop, but so is drought. As we look at the January
Drought Outlook from CPC, we can already see the impacts those Atmospheric
Rivers we talked about yesterday are having on the drought out that way, and
the expected impacts over the month. But we also see that we are expected to
remain in drought out our way with little improvement. That would occur just
based on the next 7 days alone, at least the continued improvements out West.



But we can also see what has occurred over the last 30 days, where we've had
some streaks where lines of storms moved over, but there has been widespread
above normal rainfall out across the hard-hit drought areas of the West.





That has led to a large are in the interior of California where drought improved
by one or two categories. Same for parts of eastern Oklahoma.



When we go out to the 6-month time frame, we see the big improvements in another
hard-hit drought area, where drought has dominated for a long time in the
Four Corners region into Southern California. But here in the Plains, drought
exploded across southern Kansas and northern Oklahoma.







Not really a shock that we aren't expecting bigtime drought relief, at least
not climatologically speaking. Yes, you too can speak climatologically! First
remove all excitement from your life, then take 2 Benadryl with a warm glass of
milk. Voila!



This is our driest time of the year. But meteorology trumps climatology when
you get within a couple of weeks forecast time, and meteorologically speaking
(don't ask)...it matches pretty well with the climatology. Dry. Check out this
probability map showing areas where an inch of accumulation of precip is favored
through January 19.



There are people out there asking me about when it's going to snow next, and my
answer is usually "SNOW? Heck, we can't even get rain!" So drought persists in
Oklahoma for the foreseeable future.

Wait...hot buttered popcorn at a movie?

Get Kellogg's on the phone! I just came up with the next big Pop-Tarts flavor.

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