What spring might bring in Oklahoma

If you live in waterlogged areas like Clayton or Antlers or Broken Bow, you may not appreciate the next paragraph.

Welcome to the rainy season.

Those three towns, like much of southeast Oklahoma, each received at least 15 inches of rain this winter, at least half of it coming in the past month.

Spring, which begins today, promises more of the same if historical data holds to form.

Oklahoma averages more than 12 inches of rain during spring, or roughly a third of its annual total.

This morning, the National Weather Service will announce its updated forecast for the next three months.

Its most recent update, issued Feb. 21, reflected roughly a 40 percent chance of above-normal springtime temperatures for most of Oklahoma. The temperature forecast map showed Oklahoma in the "equal chances” category.

In other words, forecasters are hedging their bets.

"Equal chances means if you had a dollar to bet, you'd put 33 cents on wetter than normal, 33 cents on drier than normal and 33 cents on normal,” said Derek Arndt, associate state climatologist for the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.

"It's like going to the doctor's office and having them say you're either going to get better, you're going to get worse or you're going to stay the same,” Arndt said.

Forecasters say it's virtually impossible to predict a tornado more than a few days in advance of its occurrence.

"You can't take an outlook and try to predict how many tornadoes we're going to have or how many stormy days we're going to have. ... All that is very localized,” said Rick Smith, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Norman.

The best predictor, they say, is history. And history shows that May holds the greatest threat of a tornado touching down in Oklahoma.

During May, there's at least a 1 percent chance of a tornado hitting within 25 miles of most towns in Oklahoma, according to the weather service's climate prediction center. The risk is about half that during March and returns to about the same percentage in July, before falling to an almost negligible risk by early August.

Smith said he and his colleagues don't spend too much time thinking about how many tornadoes spring may hold.

"Because it only takes one to make an impact,” he said.