Agricultural News
Oklahoma Mesonet Clears the Fog on Confusing Drought Monitor Readings that Give the Illusion of Drought
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 21:37:31 CDT
Constant attention is required when it comes to monitoring drought conditions for the folks who manage the Mesonet at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey. State Climatologist Gary McManus, says the Drought Monitor process is really a never-ending one and can often times be confusing to interpret if unfamiliar with the way in which the data is compiled. Such may be the case this month for people as the current Drought Monitor gives the illusion of a drought in the state, despite torrential amounts of rain recently.
He writes in an entry from the Mesonet Ticker that, "One of the curiosities of the process is the Tuesday morning 6 a.m. cutoff time for precipitation that can be considered in the new map released on Thursdays. The national author has to complete the map by Wednesday, do the drought write-up, and make sure everything is in order. You can't do that if you're still pouring through data Wednesday afternoon."
This makes a good explanation for a similar oddity found in a map graphic report of this week, pictured at the top of this story.
"Despite all the heavy precip that fell over the last 2-3 days, this week's map still shows fairly significant drought over much of the state," McManus explains. "In reality, if you look at the rainfall map from the last couple days, if you see lots of greens/yellows/oranges/reds, expect improvement on next week's map. Unfortunately, unless SE OK gets their share before Tuesday, they'll not see much improvement in next week's map, let alone their drought conditions."
While McManus suggests that just to view March's rainfall through today on the map, it shows that despite the huge storm, there is still a need for rain down in the southeast part of the state. The good news is, there are prospects for rain starting this weekend, especially for Southeast Oklahoma, according to McManus, who adds that, "things should start to green up fairly quickly now, especially if we get those warm conditions later next week."
For more information, visit the Oklahoma Mesonet website.
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