Away, drought! Away! - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

Away, drought! Away!

It's a topic that hasn't been mentioned a lot recently because, let's face it, Oklahoma has seen some decent rain over the past couple months.  And by decent, I mean relative to the amounts we saw between July/September 2010 and July/September 2011.  The drought isn't gone yet, but we're getting there.

If you'll remember, the two WORST drought categories indicated by the U.S. Drought Monitor are D3 (Extreme) and D4 (Exceptional).  92.88% of the state was under an Extreme Drought on August 9.  69.82% of the state under an Exceptional Drought on October 4.

Now, fast forward to the latest Oklahoma drought update.  At the time this blog was published, the latest data is from Tuesday, November 29.  The numbers now for the D3 and D4 categories?  39.92% of the state is still under and Extreme Drought and only 10.27% is under and Exceptional Drought.  HUGE reductions!  There's even a tiny 7.33% of the state not under a drought at all!

Granted, lots of folks in Oklahoma, specifically western Oklahoma, still need rain, but in the big picture, we've had some very beneficial late-Autumn rain.  And with more rain on the way this weekend and the potential for, yes, snow early next week, we'll have to revisit these numbers at the end of the year and see what kind of progress we've made by then.  Hopefully 2011 can rally in a big way.