Wednesday Storm Chances In Southwest Oklahoma

We've talked about it already but I'll say it again... We've gotten a really weird start to storm season this year. Back in January, meteorologists were setting Southwest Oklahoma up for a devastating storm season. They compared it to some of the more historic periods of time we've experienced... 1999 storm season that saw an EF5 travel from Chickasha through Moore and Mid-Del on OKC's Southeast side. They talked how the atmosphere looked similar to 2013, the year we recorded the largest tornado in history between El Reno and Yukon. Everyone was uneasy about how our fifth season was to play out, but I hate to call a forecast "wrong" since it's all about predicting the future, but perhaps that's the right word to use.

Winter had its last hurrah in February, that whole two week period below freezing capped with a foot of snow wasn't fun. March saw a little rain and some pretty impressive wind. April was shockingly chill, which is completely unlike April any other year. That's when the temps usually start climbing, spawning off the smaller of the severe weather locally. Even May, for the most part, has been really chill for Lawton/Fort Sill. Yes, we've had a few extremely rainy days and some incredible lightning and thunder, but severe? Not so much.

So far this week, most of the severe stuff keeps dying off to our South and West. Was it Monday a storm was traversing West Texas? It was headed up to Lawton, dropping massive hail and a few roping twisters, but by the time it changed directions and got to Wichita Falls, it sort of fell apart and just started dumping rain. Not that those levels of downpour aren't severe, we've all driven the flooded roads the mayor and mayor pro tem promised to fix and instead spent that money on that mall.

While it doesn't feel like Lawton might not truly experience severe weather this year, we do remain in a hazardous weather outlook for the time being, and the National Weather Service has extended that outlook through next Tuesday. Maybe it's not a case of Lawton not having severe weather, it could be we just haven't had it yet this year.