It may have hit 80 degrees Thursday, but Tulsa area officials were preparing for winter storms.
Tulsa Area Emergency Manager Roger Joliff said city officials participated in a tabletop exercise along with their supporting partners.
"PSO, the National Weather Service, Oklahoma Natural Gas. We had representatives from the City of Sand Springs and others to just work through a scenario, discussing the steps we would take through the warning process through a winter storm into the response phase and then into the recovery phase," Joliff said.
The National Weather Service expects a warmer, drier winter than usual, but that doesn't mean there won't be snow.
"In the situation that we're in, a weak La Nina, even though the odds are better for less precipitation overall during the winter, we may see more frequent snow events than what we typically get," said Ed Calianese with the NWS Tulsa office. "It just won't be real heavy events. It'll be kind of nuisance, light events."
Last year was Tulsa's fourth-wettest and third-warmest on record. Calianese said a normal winter with 10 inches of snow would seem bad by comparison.
Though the weather outlook seems to indicate the city fleet of several dozen trucks and store of 9,700 tons of salt won't all be needed, officials urged against complacency. Joliff said the county's had more disaster declarations for winter storms than for tornadoes.
"2011, we had the major snow event. That was a federal declaration there, and then back in 2007 we had the ice storm," Joliff said. "So, these things can be very serious."
Joliff said it's a good idea to make family emergency plans and supply kits.
