A Yankee Weather Report: Ice Man Cometh

I have taken my next two steps into obtaining my status as an Okie.

I have become weather obessed. It's the first thing I check in the morning and then will usually check it at least half way through the day. Oh and I check tomorrow's weather before I go to bed at night.

Okies are so weather obessed that they can look into the sky and tell you the type of cloud and what it means, the wind speed/the wind direction and what that means, and by putting those all together they can give a fairly accurate weather forcast.

The weather can change so fast out here. For example: Sunday, Dustin and I enter Borders at 2pm, air temperature is 68. We come out of the store at 2:45pm and the temperature is 51 degrees.

It is really out of necessity and safety that Okies are so weather obessed. It'll be another 5 months before I get to experience spring storm season. Living out here in Tornado Alley, you learn to keep your eyes on the skies from late March to May.

But right now, in December it's all about the precipitation.

Oklahoma doesn't get alot of snow. According to the National Weather Service in Norman: The three largest population centers in Oklahoma - Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Lawton -all average one 4-inch or greater snowfall event every 1 to 2 years. Eight 8-inch or greater events average roughly one every 5 years in Tulsa, one every 5 to 10 years in Oklahoma City (which is about 1.5 hours SW of Tulsa) and one every 10 to 20 years in Lawton (about 3 hours SW of Tulsa).

What they do get is ICE. Last year, millions of Okies lost power, some for almost 2 weeks, after a massive ice storm came through the area this time last year. Since that storm, they are very sensitive about any indication they might get ice.

So, as part of my Okie indoctrination, I sit here on a COLD December morning experiencing Day Two of my first Oklahoma ice event. It doesn't come close to what happened last year but it's nice little taste of how Okies deal with freezing precipitation.

Okies don't like the cold. Okies don't like ice.

As soon as the weatherman says "temperatures below 50 degrees with 20 percent chance of freezing precipitation", they jump in their pick-up trucks and SUVs and head off to the closest food market to load up on the necessities: eggs, bread, milk, rice, beans and Bud Light.

The Sand Springs area got hit with a 1/5 inch of ice on Sunday night. It was enough to cause 58 car wrecks on Monday morning in the Tulsa metro area. It was also enough for me to almost bite it in the Walmart parking lot when I was actually dumb enough to venture out. Oh and schools have been closed for 2 days because another 1/5 of ice is expected today.

And Philadelphians think they are winter weather wimps!

I learned my lesson yesterday. This Yankee is staying in til Wednesday when it is suppose to be 60 degrees, rainy and windy!