I came across this illustration that shows the ash distribution from the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. Now, I wasn't around at that time but I've spoken to fellow Okies who remember having really weird weather occurances immediately after the incident. According to this map, a large portion of Oklahoma received debris, which is funny considering it's the only state east of the mainly-affected area to get anything.

Image:1980 Mount st helens ash distribution.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1980_Mount_st_helens_ash_distribution.svg)

So that got me to thinking: What all has Oklahoma experienced, natural or manmade, say...over the last 100 years. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following:

Dust Bowl
Tropical Storm Erin
Fastest recorded winds on earth and countless tornadoes
Murrah bombing
Several earthquakes
Severe Floods

Have I missed anything else? It seems Oklahoma has been affected by nearly every calamity known to man. I'm surprised the 10 Plagues of Egypt and the dinosaur-ending asteroid didn't happen right here in our great state. What else have I missed, and what do you guys remember from the 1980 eruption?

In Oklahoma, an "earthquake" is a subwoofer.

A "mudslide" has Kahlua in it.

A "blizzard" is something you got as a kid at a DQ.

In Oklahoma, an "earthquake" is a subwoofer.

Or a 5.5 magnitude earthquake centered near El Reno




A "mudslide" has Kahlua in it.

I never mentioned a mudslide.



A "blizzard" is something you got as a kid at a DQ.
I never mentioned a blizzard, but after doing some research I found a pretty impressive list of blizzards dating back to the 70's.

I have never understood the trend of downplaying things in Oklahoma simply because they may not be as impressive as some events in other places. A tornado is a tornado in Florida just as much as it is in Oklahoma. The degree in which they differ may be apparent, but the phenomenon is real.

While stationed in Idaho, I used to put up with crap about the landscape in Oklahoma, particularly the mountains. To them, they're not real mountains. That's fine and dandy considering the designation of mountains is completely subjective. However, I can play that game by rebutting with: the mountains in Idaho are lame compared to the ones in Utah, which are weak compared to Colorado, which are hills compared to the mountains in California, Alaska, Hawaii, Asia, so on and so forth. By this logic, the mountains in Idaho aren't real.

Oklahoma may not have spectacular earthquakes, but they do occur. I'm not trying to debate the intensity of these events occuring in Oklahoma; I'm simply trying to document what has occured.

Back on topic.

I was in southern oklahoma fishing on a farm pond and the water rippled. Didn't think anything about it until we learned there was a small earth quake.

In the 1980s the Chernobyl cloud drifted across the planet and supposedly went right over Oklahoma. At least the news people were hyping that at the time anyway.

I was at Lake Arcadia a few years ago.. the sky was turning red, orange and very eerie looking. Of course, at the time, I had no idea there was anything but maybe a wind storm stirring up red dirt..

We got into the car and turned on the radio to an Emergency Broadcast telling us that Fires were surrounding our neighborhood. I called my neighbor who had been calling me ( I was on the lake) and she said it was still safe in our addition but to try to get home to water down my lawn and house in case it got closer. We had to drive around a few miles and there was ash and smoke everywhere.

Very, very scary and pretty unreal.

Last year, probably the first time ever, a tropical storm (forgot name) that was a hurricane when it hit land in Texas and weakened as it moved toward Oklahoma regained strength on land through Oklahoma City as Catagory 1 hurricane.

Expressions of weather men on tv...priceless!

More locally, during the 9-11 ordeal, bomb threats called in, students at Del City High School ran out screaming in pure fear. This happened 2 or 3 days straight. I think it was the 2nd or 3rd time, there was buses, people just ran out to the buses, trying to get into them and others just panic-scattered in all directions, even across busy Sunnylane.

10 years or more ago, wild grass fire aggressively burned toward Oklahoma School for the Deaf. Buses was lined up, pillows, blankets, and food was ready to be loaded. Fire trucks blazing by back and forth. OSD still stands to this day.

Ice, ice, ice, we can never get enough of those during the winter.

What all has Oklahoma experienced, natural or manmade, say...over the last 100 years. Off the top of my head, I came up with the following:

Dust Bowl
Tropical Storm Erin
Fastest recorded winds on earth and countless tornadoes
Murrah bombing
Several earthquakes
Severe Floods

Have I missed anything else? It seems Oklahoma has been affected by nearly every calamity known to man. I'm surprised the 10 Plagues of Egypt and the dinosaur-ending asteroid didn't happen right here in our great state. What else have I missed, and what do you guys remember from the 1980 eruption?

Well, obviously we're prone to huge ice storms like the one that devastated central Oklahoma last winter.

We're also subject to huge weather changes like the infamous "Blue Norther" on November 11, 1911. It's the only date left in the record books on which the existing record high and record low temperatures were recorded on the same day. An Arctic front roared into the state and plunged the temperature reading at Oklahoma City from an afternoon high of 83°F to a midnight low of 17°F. The temperature fell to 14°F on the morning of the 12th - a drop of 69 degrees in less than 24 hours.

Last year, probably the first time ever, a tropical storm (forgot name) that was a hurricane when it hit land in Texas and weakened as it moved toward Oklahoma regained strength on land through Oklahoma City as Catagory 1 hurricane.

Expressions of weather men on tv...priceless!




Unfortunately 100% inaccurate.

Referring to: 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/2007atlan.shtml)

Since the National Hurricane Center is the official word when it comes to categorizing tropical systems, I'm going to leave it to their report. While yes it produced strong winds over hurricane force at one point - they stayed away from calling it a tropical storm or hurricane over land. It took them MONTHS to issue their final report on Erin because of the debate and intense research that went into the decision.

While some of us in the community may disagree with their conclusion...what they say goes.

Parts highlighted...

Erin will also be remembered for its unusual, brief strengthening, although not as a tropical cyclone, over Oklahoma.

The depression continued northwestward and inland, and degenerated to a remnant low by 1200 UTC 17 August when it was centered about 50 n mi south of San Angelo, Texas. The remnant low turned northward over extreme western Texas on 18 August around the western periphery of the ridge over the southeastern United States. Upon reaching the northwestern extent of the ridge, the system turned northeastward and entered southwestern Oklahoma shortly after 0000 UTC 19 August. The remnant low had occasionally produced some heavy rainfall over Texas during the preceding 36 hours, but the convection was not sufficiently persistent and organized to designate the system as a tropical depression during that period.

As the surface low moved generally east-northeastward over Oklahoma early on 19 August, the associated thunderstorm activity abruptly increased as the low interacted with an eastward-moving upper-level shortwave trough. During an approximately six-hour period that morning, sustained surface winds as strong as about 50 kt were observed at several locations in western and central Oklahoma, with isolated gusts as strong as about 70 kt. The system’s organization also became dramatically enhanced, with an eye-like feature readily discernible in WSR-88D radar imagery between about 0800 and 1300 UTC as the center of the low passed just north of downtown Oklahoma City (Fig. 4 shows a radar image at 1200 UTC). This episode was short-lived, however, and the eye-like feature quickly dissipated after 1300 UTC. The thunderstorm activity and strong winds had already begun to weaken by that time, as the upper-level shortwave trough proceeded eastward and away from the surface low. The surface circulation dissipated shortly after 1800 UTC 19 August over northeastern Oklahoma, but remnant moisture continued northeastward into Missouri.

While the system's structure, particularly its convective organization as seen on radar, resembled and had some characteristics of a tropical storm for a few hours on 19 August, the prevailing view from the Hurricane Specialists at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) is that the system was not a tropical cyclone over Oklahoma. The phrase “organized deep convection” in the NHC tropical cyclone definition has both spatial and temporal components, meaning that a tropical cyclone must produce deep convection over some period of time. While it is a subjective determination, in this case the deep convection is judged to have lasted an insufficient period of time to classify the system as a tropical cyclone. The limited duration of the convection also appears to be indicative of the physical mechanisms that caused the low to briefly strengthen. It is speculated that the upper-level shortwave trough forced the deep convection to increase via upper-level difluence, while briefly superimposed above the surface low that provided a focus for low-level confluence. The upper-level forcing was apparently a dominant mechanism, which is in contrast to tropical cyclones that are maintained primarily by extraction of heat energy from the ocean. Since the system was clearly non-frontal, designating it as an extratropical cyclone is also not the most appropriate solution. In addition, the prevailing view among the NHC’s Hurricane Specialists is that the system’s duration over Oklahoma on 19 August was also too short to classify it as a subtropical cyclone . Given all of the considerations described above, the system is simply designated as a “low” by NHC on 19 August.


The maximum intensity of the low over Oklahoma is set to 50 kt at 0600 UTC 19 August based on surface observations. An Oklahoma Mesonet site located seven miles west of Watonga (about 50 n mi northwest of Oklahoma City), reported sustained winds (5-minute average) of 47 kt near 0725 UTC, with sustained winds of gale force occurring there much of the time between 0600 and 0800 UTC. Also, at 0725 UTC, this station measured a surface pressure estimated to be equivalent to 999 mb at sea level, so the minimum central pressure was likely lower than that observation and is set to 995 mb at 0600 UTC in the best track. Nearby, a sustained wind of 42 kt, with a gust to 71 kt, was measured at Watonga Airport (an AWOS site) at 0754 UTC, and the station stopped reporting after that time. A little earlier, the Oklahoma Mesonet site at Fort Cobb (about 50 n mi west-southwest of Oklahoma City) reported a sustained wind of 43 kt (also a 5-minute average). Several other observing sites in the eastern semicircle of the circulation, within about 45 n mi of the center, measured sustained winds of 35-40 kt at times between about 0500 UTC until almost 1200 UTC; the strongest winds at selected sites are listed in Table 2.

Erin and its remnants brought heavy rains to portions of southeastern, south-central, and western Texas, portions of Oklahoma, and portions of southern Missouri. Storm-total rainfall amounts of 3-7 in were common in these areas, with some locations receiving more than 10 in (Table 2 and Fig. 5). Erin added to the effects of the flooding that had already occurred within the two prior weeks in the Nueces River basin south and west of San Antonio, Texas.


Following Erin’s tropical cyclone phase, six tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma on 18-19 August.

Only sharing what I had heard from the weather guys announcing what the higher ups released as a strength of a Catagory 1 hurricane. Okay, so they changed their mind months later. Still, the radar don't lie. :P

I want to step out of the past 100 years and talk about something as big and destructive--if not more destructive to the surrounding area than Mt. St. Helens was up in that region. Granted, this happened, what was it, 470 plus or minus 30 million years ago...ever heard of the Ames Crater? I mean, it's buried, but its diameter is only 10 miles across...MAKING IT FAR BIGGER THAN THE METEOR CRATER IN ARIZONA THAT WAS FEATURED IN THE MOVIE STARMAN. Talk about something that hasn't happened up there...