Ticker for September 5, 2024

                
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September 5, 2024  September 5, 2024  September 5, 2024  September 5, 2024


Extremely Extreme




"Ravaged" is the word. No, this ain't no romance novel...there'll be no Fabio
memes. That hair though!! Sigh. Wait, back to the topic at hand. Drought continues
to intensify in the state, especially in SW OK where extreme drought (D3) now
covers 47% of that climate division, the highest coverage since Oct. 24 of last
year. Conditions have worsened over the last 2 months, and those changes aren't
confined to just SW OK.





The improvements have been concentrated in those strips of heavier rainfall we've
seen over the last month or so, but the 60-day rainfall maps show the story.







Heck (no, it's not raining right now...I wish!), Mangum has gone 94 consecutive
days without at least a quarter-inch of rain in a single day!





94 days?!? Are you kidding me Private Pyle...errr, I mean Mangum?? That's 0.9
inches over the last 90 days, which looks worse than even those 60-day maps.
Wait, Walters with 0.8 inches?

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, WALTERS?!?









We're on the cusp of seeing that Exceptional-D4 drought reintroduced to the
state if'n we're not careful. And we're becoming a powder keg. Should we start
getting those dry fall cold fronts with the low humidity and strong SW to NW
winds...watch out.





How about looking down from space? Easy to see from OK-FIRE's relative greenness
map that our vegetation is going backwards a bit early this year, acting like
it's fall already when the growing season is still going strong.





What about those rain prospects?

Rain?? ARE YOU KIDD...never mind. Let's just look at the bad news and get it
over with.







Yeah, that's not encouraging at all. With the late-to-the-party La Nina possibly
still in the mix for later this fall and winter, that would not be good news
either as that ocean-atmospheric coupling phenomenon from the Equatorial Pacific
waters off the West Coast of South America tends to bring us drier than normal
conditions during the cool season.



We should get the latest ENSO forecast next week, so we'll have a better idea
on prospects for that La Nina possibility.

Until we get rain, though, best to practice those conservation techniques and
keep wildfire danger in mind as you go about your day.

Gary McManus
State Climatologist
Oklahoma Mesonet
Oklahoma Climate Survey
gmcmanus@ou.edu