Oklahoma Is About To Get A Serious Taste Of Winter

Even though Oklahoma is best known for its weather, tornadoes, hailstorms, extreme droughts, record rains, etc., it's still wild enough to shock those who've lived here the longest.

The current long-range outlook goes completely against what extended forecasts have been predicting for fall over the last couple of months.

Experts were expecting the Sooner State to follow the same trend it did last year. The endless fall was glorious, and I'd bet that'd be perfectly fine with most Oklahomans.

The headlines last year were all about ticks and insects, but the drought seemed to put a huge damper on that. I haven't read a headline about bugs in months. We hauled the bass boat to the lake on Christmas Day for a few hours, and even exchanged pleasantries with other anglers about how it was almost uncomfortably warm in the hot sun. Winter eventually came, but it only stuck around for two weeks before hopping straight into spring.

It was awesome, and as the summer progressed this year, we noticed some crazy things.

For me, it was the lack of cottonwood. My neighbor has three huge cottonwood trees on our fence line, and it's a menace when it starts snowing seeds in June. But in 2026, I didn't see a single cottonwood floater in the yard. The mature maples on the other side of the street didn't make those whirly-bird helicopter seeds this year either, but still a fair trade-off for the winter we had in 25-26.

It doesn't look like that's going to happen again in 26-27.

If you haven't seen the long-range forecast, winter is coming.

An Early October Cold Snap Is Headed For Oklahoma

We had a debate over whether it was the first or second big plunge of cold air headed for Oklahoma mid-next week, but that's not the headline. Temperatures in the 40s and wind chills in the 30s definitely are.

It's not going to be a direct hit to our part of the US, but we'll get the edges of it for a few days. It'll be coldest in the northeastern parts of the state, but those wind chills are expected even down here in SWOK.

Cold and October don't usually go hand in hand here in Oklahoma. Cool nights, sure, but we've also trick-or-treated in 95-degree weather before too.

All the same, and I can't believe it's been so long ago, we had a record-early severe ice storm in late October 2020... So the cold/cold is definitely possible this early in the season.

Oklahoma's Weather Is Taking A Sharp Turn

The forecast isn't set in stone, and you probably know that. Our weather is wild, quite literally year-round, so this big tease of winter weather during the spooky season could just as easily make a theoretical shift and become the last hurrah of 100-degree temps too.

It won't, but it could happen. Just as the weather authorities kept promising a break in the 100-degree days "at the end of next week" for most of August and September, the extended forecast is notoriously fickle.

It's time to break out the jackets and hoodies. Get them washed up for the season. It looks like 2026 is going to have a cooler rest of fall and an actual winter... Which is completely on-brand for an El Niño year.