Ticker for April 11, 2023

                
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April 11, 2023     April 11, 2023     April 11, 2023     April 11, 2023


'Tis a start




Much like what's in hotdogs, or what goes on in the kitchens at Taco Bell...we
don't care how we got rain northwest of I-44, we don't want to KNOW how we got
rain northwest of I-44. We're just glad we got it. Oh, it was scattered alright.
I haven't seen anything that sporadic since I last took a closeup look of my
scalp, but still, there was a good spread of a quarter-to-inch of rainfall in
places. It was so scattered most Mesonet sites missed the good totals, but El Reno
came in with 1.15 inches, and Pawnee was close behind with 1.01 inches. We even
managed to reset a few spots on these maps over the last couple of days.





Looks like 17 or 18 sites managed to reset their growing number of days without
at least a tenth of an inch, and 5 sites maybe reset their days without at least
a quarter-inch of rain. Yeah, not nearly enough on ANY of these maps, but if you
were one of the lucky ones, well...yeah, count yourselves lucky!

Wordsmith, am I right??

So now we go back into an unfortunate weather pattern with more ridging, more
dry and warm and windy weather that alerts us to more fire danger rather than
springtime storms.



Our next chance of rain, if you want to call it that, comes Thursday into
Friday. However, as our friends at the Amarillo NWS office point out, sometimes
those storms can cause more harm than good. No, not with tornadoes and hail
and whatnot, but with lightning. It turns out that raining electricity from
the sky that reaches temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun can
ignite wildfires. "Dry thunderstorms" they're called.



So little rainfall is expected it doesn't even register on the 5-day rainfall
forecast.



Yeah, I wish there was better news. Everyday we stay in a dry pattern we're
missing out on a chance for drought amelioration (English to Okie translation:
improvement) during our "normal" rainy season, which for most of the state
started a couple of weeks ago and runs through mid-to-late June.



It WILL happen, eventually. When is the key. Not soon, it appears...but
eventually.



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