Weather in Oklahoma

Hi, I’m Marcie Billen here in Norman, Oklahoma. I’m a real estate agent with Keller Williams and Rüya Team Realty, so we help a ton of people move into Oklahoma from out of state, typically from places like California, Washington State, Colorado, Texas; all these different places and questions that I typically get is “What’s the weather like”?

Today we’re going to talk with meteorologist, David Imy, to see if he can answer some of your questions about what the weather is actually like in Oklahoma, from a professional standpoint. If you are moving to Oklahoma or thinking about it, download my FREE relocation guide to see if any of that information will be helpful to you.

Let’s meet meteorologist, David Imy!

David has been a meteorologist and interested in weather his entire life. He worked for the National Weather Service for 33 years as a forecaster and a supervisor. David retired in 2011 and since that time he’s been teaching weather at colleges, he’s also been working with FEMA – going out and doing weather classes that way. David also assists in law cases when lawyers need weather experts and we are so happy to have him with join us on our site!

Oklahoma: where the wind comes sweeping down the plains

Tornadoes | Hail | Flooding | Hurricanes | Fires

Tornadoes

What is tornado season?

Tornado season in Oklahoma is generally from March through May, but if you get the right conditions, you can have a tornado almost any time of the year. However, most of the tornadoes occur during in the months of March, April, and May.

Where do tornadoes hit?

Tornadoes occur can occur all across the state of Oklahoma, especially during the spring months. Here in Cleveland county, we average about one tornado per year. In the in the last 70 years, there’s average of about 1 tornado per year. Now, if you think about that, we’ve had over 25,000 days since 1950. In that time, we’ve only had five days that had tornado fatalities. In 1999 and 2013 we had two big tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma and that gets most of the attention, but those are very rare and those are do not occur often at all here in Oklahoma or in Cleveland County.

In either Norman or Moore, you’re probably looking at a tornado somewhere in city limits once every 5 to 10 years

In either Norman or Moore, you’re probably looking at a tornado somewhere in the city limits once every five to ten years, but 90% of those tornadoes have winds less than 110 miles per hour so they don’t usually make the news, and they usually don’t do that much damage. For reference, in the 2013 Moore tornado, the winds were around 200 miles per hour on the on the EF Scale that rated as a 5, EF5. We also had an EF5 in the Moore tornado in 1999, but less than two percent of all tornadoes are in that level or range of tornadoes. So those are very rare tornadoes, not just in Oklahoma, but across the entire country.

What time of day do tornadoes usually happen?

Here in Oklahoma, in central Oklahoma especially, most tornadoes will occur between 1 and 2 pm in the afternoon until 10 pm at night. We’re very fortunate here in central Oklahoma that overnight tornadoes are very rare. Usually it’s just a late afternoon, early evening phenomena.

When the tornado sirens go off, how much time is there to take shelter?

So of course, we have tornado sirens here in Oklahoma and Norman and we have a test every day every Saturday at noon. The average lead time from when a warning is issued to the time a tornado actually occurs is 13 minutes, but that varies depending on the storm. The weaker tornadoes usually have shorter lead time. In other words, it might only be a couple of minutes because they don’t have a very good indication on radar.

The stronger tornadoes usually have a lot more lead time, like 15 to 30 minutes before the tornado actually strikes a given location. And when and of course, when it first develops, sometimes radar might not have a very good indication so there needs to be we have storm spotters who will call it into the weather service that can issue a warning based on someone seeing the developing sides of a tornado.

How strong are most tornadoes in Oklahoma?

Most of the tornadoes, 90% will have winds less 110 miles per hour we call that EF one or zero on the Fujita scale. So most of the tornadoes will be of the weak variety; only two percent will be of the EF4 – EF5 variety. So out of 100 tornadoes in Oklahoma, we would expect no more than two to be the high-end EF4 – EF5 tornado.

Do tornado shelters keep you safe?

Yes, if the tornado shelters are built by a reputable company, and there’s many of them here in Oklahoma, and they follow the FEMA guidelines, those shelters will protect you from any tornado, even the EF5 tornadoes. Here in Oklahoma, most of tornado shelters are now built in garages so it doesn’t take up any more square footage in the house and they’re easy to get in and out of. So yes, a tornado shelter will totally protect you from any tornado even the EF5 here in Oklahoma.

Hail

How often do we get hail and what kind of damage does that do?

Here in central Oklahoma, we probably will have two or three storms that will probably produce some type of hail during, usually in the spring, maybe early summer months. The hail, a majority of the time, is is the size of a dime or smaller. There are some instances, especially on tornado days, where the hail is golf ball to baseball size.

Having that size hail at any one location probably occurs maybe once every three to five years. There is that possibility it is a higher probability in western Oklahoma than it is in eastern Oklahoma. And central Oklahoma is right on the borderline between the giant hail to the west and not as big hail to the east. So here in Norman, probably once every three to five years, the possibility of getting maybe golf ball size here.

Flooding

How can I tell if I’ll have flood issues if I move to Oklahoma?

Well, there are most of the flooding in Norman in Oklahoma is mostly flat, at least in central Oklahoma, so most of our water is what I would call severe pondy. Instead of big flash floods like we see in other areas where the terrain is more varied, our water just tends to spread out. The most significant flooding occurs near creeks, rivers, and in low-lying areas. FEMA has a map that shows the flood plains in areas where it floods here in Norman, or in any location you want to look in the United States. So FEMA maps would be the place to look to see if you’re in a flood plain and also to see how close you might be to a flood plain. Those maps are updated on a regular basis because as you build more homes, or you down more concrete, that could change the floodplain. It can be very important when you buy a home.

Hurricanes

Do we see any effect from hurricanes that have entered the Gulf?

When we think of hurricanes, we think of strong winds and as they come inland they they’re being fed by the ocean, but once they come inland, they lose that feed. So, what happens is the hurricane movements will decrease very rapidly and before a hurricane can get through to Oklahoma, it has to go through Texas. So if a hurricane was to come up through Texas, by the time it got to Oklahoma, the winds would be much weaker. We still probably might have 30 to 40 mile-per-hour winds, but nothing like what you would see down on The Gulf Coast or near the coast.

The main threat from the hurricane would be heavy rains and potential flooding. If it’s a real slow moving system, then there would be a greater potential for flooding, so that would be the main effects we would see from hurricanes: heavy rain and possible flooding.

Fires

Do we get a lot of wildfires in Oklahoma and how does that affect us?

Surprisingly, we do get wildfires in Oklahoma, especially if we have a long-term drought. You know, if we’re way below on rainfall and then in the spring or in the fall, you get some real windy days and a fire gets started, it can spread pretty quickly. Now those fires are generally mostly grassland fires or are shorter brush or trees, so they don’t have quite the fuels that we see out in the west United States. So they can burn a lot of area but they’re not usually nearly as intense or last as long as the ones that we normally see in the western United States, which have many more fuels to burn and can get out of control comparted to Oklahoma. So yes, we have wildfires but they’re not the same type of wildfires that we see in the western United States.

Are our wildfires usually in more rural areas or in city limits?

Mostly they are. They’re they’re they’re outside the city, we have had some uh in central Oklahoma uh close to the cities, but those have been much more rare than big grassland fires, mainly in western Oklahoma.

Terrain

What affect does the terrain between central, western, and eastern Oklahoma have on the weather?

Well as you go from central Oklahoma and eastern Oklahoma the rainfall is progressively more, there’s more rain. So central Oklahoma averages about 30 to 33 inches of rain a year; as you get into far eastern Oklahoma, it’s closer to 50 inches a year. So there’s a little bit more flooding, they do have a little bit more maybe severe weather, but it’s usually not as intense as we see in western Oklahoma. You can also get wildfires in eastern Oklahoma; there are more trees, but usually that they have such a wetter climate that it’s much rarer in eastern Oklahoma than it is in central or western Oklahoma.

So there you have it! See, it wasn’t as bad as some of you may have thought. While the sever weather is something to take seriously, it’s not something that happens all the time in Oklahoma. Usually we have a pretty moderate climate, especially compared to some of our neighboring northern states, which means milder winters with out a lot of snow. Our summers are pretty warm and humid, but that just means more time to spend outdoors at one of our lakes or local pools!

I hope this was helpful for those of you who were curious about the weather and if you have any other questions or are considering moving to the area, send me an email, call, or text!