Ticker for March 24, 2025

                
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March 24, 2025     March 24, 2025     March 24, 2025     March 24, 2025


DING DONG Winter is dead!




A lot of folks e-mailed (and even a call or two) asking if I was okay, where was
I, had I eaten a batch of bad Pop-Tarts?

HECK NO! I just took off for Spring Break, or as we call it in my house...Spring
Broke. I've regaled you before (and we all know just how painful that can be)
about my attempts to corner the cardboard market. I bought in when it was 15
cents/ton, and I bought 3 tons of it. Now that it's down to 12 cents/ton, we
could only afford a stay-cation eating ramen and watching Tubi (or as we call it
in my house...Temu Netflix).

A lot happened over that period, however. We had one of the windiest days in
Mesonet history on Friday the 14th, when 99 of our sites had a wind gust of at
least 50 mph, topping the old record of 83 sites back on March 31, 2023.



And 63 sites had a "severe" wind gust (NWS defined, greater than or equal to 57.4
mph), topping the old record of May 27, 2021's 49 stations.

And of course those winds fueled the worst Firestorm in memory across Oklahoma
that day with what I can tell was about 170,000 acres burned, with at least
400 homes damaged or destroyed by the fires, 4 lives lost, and over 200 injuries.

And a dust storm that brought many people back to the Dust Bowl, whether they
liked it or not.

We had drought kick it up a notch in NW OK, thanks to over 4 months without
a significant wetting event, whilst the rest of us are working on 2 weeks.





Those 120-day maps are looking nasty.







How about looking ahead? Who am I to say Winter is dead? Why did I rhyme there?
And why do I have no hair?

Well, it WAS cold this morning, but it does look like our days with any extended
cold weather are definitely numbered.



And if you look at some forecast model data for chances of freezing weather in
the next couple of weeks, those are close to nil as well, at least for most of
the state. And the outlook through mid-April is positively ABOVE normal.





And we're getting close to our average last freeze date anyway.



And heck, we're already past our earliest last (what?) spring freeze, at least
the 10th percentile normal (i.e., there's a 10% chance the final spring freeze
will have occurred on or before the date displayed).



It is Oklahoma, though, so expect a blizzard in April sometime.

Not this week, though, and not next week either. Probably.

Rain? Well, you know how it goes...again, Oklahoma. Those that need it won't
get it, and those that don't need it soon will anyway.



More on that tomorrow.

Hey, who you calling moron?

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