Braving the flooded streets of Norman on Sunday night hardly brought the word “drought” to mind, but that’s exactly what Norman is in: a drought.

Norman received an average of 3.8 inches of rain Friday through Sunday, but that was not enough to bring it out of a drought, said Ken Gallant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The area still needs 13 to 15 inches of rain to reduce the Palmer Drought Index to -0.5, according to the Forecast Office website.

The index takes a long-term look at precipitation and its impact and is the standard climatologists use to determine drought status. To be at -0.5 would mean to be almost neutral — having neither a deficit nor excess of rain, Gallant said.

The weather service anticipates more rain late Tuesday and early Wednesday, Gallant said. That rain isn’t expected to be as heavy or to last as long as the recent downpour but will still help.

It would take several more rain showers, maybe an inch or two each, to alleviate the drought completely, Gallant said.

“Considering the deficit, we’ve still got a ways to go,” Gallant said.

That deficit is the product of record-breaking summer heat that put the state under a burn ban from July 17 to Sept. 27. Oklahoma’s climatological summer — June 1 through Aug. 31 — ended with an average of 86.8 degrees, according to data from the Oklahoma Mesonet.

Gary McManus, associate state climatologist with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, said the weekend rain is a drought reliever, not an end to it. It is still unclear how much of the rain soaked into the soil or ran off into area reservoirs or stock ponds, he said.

“You don’t erase 20-inch deficits with a 3-to-4-inch rainfall,” McManus said.

McManus expects central Oklahoma to move from exceptional, the most critical drought classification, to a slightly less-risky extreme drought on the U.S. Drought Monitor map Thursday because of the rain.

That rain was timed perfectly with the life cycle of winter wheat, which is planted in October, McManus said. This year, farmers previously had not had enough moisture to get the crop into the soil and save it, unlike this weekend.

Laney Ellisor, Assistant Managing Editor