Western Oklahoma Finally Gets Rain… Maybe Too Much

After being dry enough to sink into the exceptional category of drought over the last ten months, Western Oklahoma finally has a solid forecast of rain later today.

By now, with as dry as it has been, you'd almost expect any harvesting action to be done by now, but if farmers are still combining their acres, today's weather could put them in a bind for a few days.

The scenario.

Pretty much the entirety of Western OK is included in the rain chances, but meteorologists aren't expecting large areas of widespread rain.

wpc.ncep.noaa.gov

Instead, the forecast is lots of little scattered storms that are expected to dump serious amounts of rain. Too much rain. Runoff and flooding rains.

It's a 50-50, and a real shame that the driest area of the state might skip recovery and go straight to the opposite end of the moisture spectrum.

All the same, the weather does whatever it wants.

Rain is great, but when it's falling at 1-2 inches per hour in small clusters across ground that hasn't received rain in months, it sets the stage for massive runoff, flooding, and erosion.

https://www.weather.gov/oun/

Timing

After a slight chance for rain this morning, the afternoon will build into the evening and overnight hours.

While severe weather isn't expected, high winds and maybe some hail might come with storms that manage to develop.

Looking further ahead, every day over the next week has a chance of rain somewhere across Oklahoma, but the odds of severe weather are low. Not zero, but there.

https://www.weather.gov/oun/

Regardless, any rain is better than no rain.