Dangerously high temperatures aren't going anywhere.
In Central Oklahoma, an extreme heat warning is in effect Tuesday until 8 p.m., and Tulsa has an extreme heat warning starting Tuesday afternoon into Wednesday night. Highs and heat index values are expected to reach triple digits for the rest of the week.
"It's a little bit of a summer on steroids," State Climatologist Gary McManus said. "You know, when we look at the number of triple-digit temperatures in parts of the state, we're already well above average for the number of hundreds we would expect to see this time of year."
Dry and hot weather has elevated fire weather and wildfires have burned nearly 4,200 acres in the state, according to the Oklahoma Forestry Services. As of Monday afternoon, 32 counties had burn bans in effect.
Although northern Oklahoma received rain Monday, moisture has been tough to come by. Residents have seen water conservation notices in cities across the state — Tuttle, Blanchard, Guymon, Minco and Pauls Valley.
In Blanchard, City Manager Roger Kolman said heat combined with water use strained the water system. Although storage facilities were down, conservation measures such as limiting lawn watering have begun to improve water storage.
"We're headed in the right direction," Kolman said. "We're not headed there as fast as we'd like to, but it is a situation, for Blanchard anyway, that it's not dire at this point. We've got enough storage that in case we hit a major emergency, we'd be able to handle that."
Blanchard buys its water from Oklahoma City, where Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser are about four to six feet below normal, McManus said. He said water shortages are seen this time of the year because evaporation is running well ahead of precipitation, something the state lacks.
In the agricultural sector, intense heat and drought have left ponds and soil moisture in dire straits. This causes problems for livestock, the ranchers who haul water to the animals and farmers who need the moisture for next year's winter wheat crop.
Almost all of the state is in a drought, but McManus said Western Oklahoma is in particularly rough shape.
"Western Oklahoma, the soil is dry down to several feet, and that's just because they've had longer drought period than what, let's say, the eastern half of the state has seen," McManus said. "But if you look out (to) western Oklahoma again, the farm ponds, the stock ponds, they've been dry for quite some time or at least going dry. And then we're starting to see that start to happen in eastern Oklahoma too."
This report was produced by the Oklahoma Public Media Exchange, a collaboration of public media organizations. Help support collaborative journalism by donating at the link at the top of this webpage.
