Ticker for December 14, 2023

                
MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ... MESONET TICKER ...
December 14, 2023  December 14, 2023  December 14, 2023  December 14, 2023


Yuletide outerwear




You're going to be visited by 3 ghosts...whoops, wrong story. You're gonna be
visited by very bland weather for Christmas Day, with highs in the 40s and 50s
and no snow. I actually think there might be a chance of some snow on the ground
in the far western Panhandle for Christmas morning, so they MIGHT, and I
emphasize "MIGHT" because we're still 11 days out, see a white Christmas out that
way. That got me to wondering, "I wonder (amazing, ain't it?) what our warmest
Christmas Day was in the Mesonet era?"

Okay, I didn't actually wonder this, but I generated all those high temperature
maps from the Mesonet and I needed something to do with them. And in looking at
that top graphic, you can't see the numbers so you'll have to go by the colors,
it looks close between the two coolest and two warmest...2016 and 2021 for warmest,
2000 and 2012 for the coolest.

Well there have to be winners, right?

2021 gets the nod for warmest with a statewide average of 73 degrees. 73 DEGREES?
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? For Christmas Day? Yes, 73 degrees. Remember, that came
during the warmest December on record for Oklahoma BY 5.3F!!! Yes, three
exclamation points because that's absolutely unheard of to beat a previous
monthly record by that amount, at 10.3F above normal.





December 2000 gets the prize for coldest Mesonet Christmas Day with a statewide
average high temperature of 27 degrees.



Now that one is far enough back that I can't remember that much about it except
that it did snow that day in NW OK, so we had a white Christmas back in Buffalo.
Also later that week it snowed a lot in the state, and my future wife...my fiance
if you will, went to the movies at the old Crossroads Mall theater on New Year's
Eve where some young lady slipped in the snow and fell on her behind (she was
fine and came up laughing) and I laughed out loud...LOL'ed if you will. Well,
my future wife DIDN'T laugh, and so later on I WASN'T laughing anymore either.

No, I'm not proud of that story but she DID in fact still marry me. Oh, we were
seeing "Miss Congeniality." I'm not proud of that either.

Remember we're talking Christmas Days here...Christmas Mornings are a different
story and one I'll save for later because I've already bored you silly.

Speaking of snow, still expecting more in the western Panhandle later today, and
at a pretty fast clip.





Meanwhile, rain will continue to fall farther east, and eventually spread across
nearly the entire state. Heavier totals out west, of course, adding to the
hefty totals that have already been reported.





This should all be out of here by Saturday afternoon, then we go into another
relatively warm, dry pattern until later next week when we see another possible
storm system BEFORE Christmas Day and with mostly rain.



Wait, the coldest Christmas Day in Oklahoma history, so going back pre-Mesonet?
Oh that's easy, I don't even have to look it up.

Christmas Day 1983.



Gary McManus
Mr. Congeniality
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climatological Survey
gmcmanus@mesonet.org