Ticker for March 29, 2023

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
March 29, 2023     March 29, 2023     March 29, 2023     March 29, 2023


Plan vacation for Friday




WHOA, JIM! Now that's a busy graphic. I barely have time to Tick but I definitely
wanted to Tock about what's coming up in the next few days. Thursday and
especially Friday are some of THOSE days in Oklahoma. No, not so much THOSE days
with severe weather, but THOSE days in early spring when we get a strong storm
system coming in packing lots of wind and a dryline, with bigtime drought in place
in the High Plains. The severe weather threat still looks pretty low and
conditional (lots of stuff has to happen for IT to happen, and it doesn't look
like said stuff is going to happen so IT probably won't happen...follow?), but
what is certain is we're gonna have low relative humidity behind that dryline,
lots of wind and warmth, so fire danger is going to be sky high. The wildfires will
be bad enough, but the High Plains is going to punish points east with a bit of
soil, just to remind us of the horrible predicament they're in.

We start out with a Red Flag Fire warning for Thursday in the western two Panhandle
counties, then we have a Fire Weather Watch for much of the rest of western OK,
which will probably be converted to a Red Flag Fire warning on Thursday and
Friday, to some degree. And that fire weather is going to hang around for the
rest of the week and then some.











So once again, a lesson that drought isn't just local, it can impact areas
far and abreast of its location. Sorry for those wanting/needing rain, it just
ain't there with this storm, it would appear. Still some "conditional" hope,
under the right conditions.



Cutting out early to head to the dentist. Gotta get those teeth nice and clean
to make way for some grit in 'em on Friday.

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