November

November is considered a fall month climatologically, but it certainly did its best to look like a winter month during 2013. Emphatically cooler than normal, thanks mostly to a frigid outburst by Mother Nature during its final 10 days, November was punctuated by an early cool-season snowstorm that dumped more than a foot of snow across southwestern Oklahoma. According to data from the Oklahoma Mesonet, the statewide average temperature for the month ended 1.8 degrees below normal at 46.5 degrees, the 33rd coolest November since records began in 1895.

Drought surged during November with a return to the dry, warm and windy weather pattern that Oklahoma has become accustomed to over the last couple of years. According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor report, the amount of extreme to exceptional drought rose from 72 percent last week to 91 percent this week. The state had not seen that amount of extreme to exceptional drought since late September. Other than a small but persistent area of moderate drought in far northeastern Oklahoma, the entire state remained in at least severe drought according to the report.