2012 One Of Hottest, Driest Years On Record For Tulsa

According to the official records for Tulsa, 2012 was one of the driest and hottest years on record.

News On 6 Meteorologist Dick Faurot said 2012 was the eleventh driest calendar year on record since 1888, with 28.74 inches of rain for the whole year. It's been three years since we've had a year that was wetter than normal. For those three years, the rainfall total was about 20 inches below normal and nearly 10 inches of that was in the past year.

"We had a brief drought period in 2001-2002, but it has been quite awhile since we have experienced a drought of this extent," Faurot said.

As for temperatures, it should come as no surprise that 2012 also saw some record high temperatures.

"We blew past the previous record set back in 1921 by almost a full degree, which is rather remarkable," said Faurot. "That makes two straight years of much above normal temperatures, but 2010 was near normal and the two years prior to that were cooler than normal so it remains to be seen if we are going to be threatening the extended period of much above normal temperature that characterized the 1930s."

Summer 2012 saw some extreme temperatures.

Faurot said, on July 31, the average temperature for the entire day was 100 degrees, which had never occurred in the area before, not even during the extreme heat of the 1930s.

Tulsa suffered through 38 days of triple digit temperatures. That number was down a bit from the 44 in 2011, Faurot said, and both of those numbers are far short of the 1936 record of 65 days.

Find out more on Dick Faurot's blog