Investigating an Apparent High-Temperature Anomaly at Two Oklahoma Mesonet Sites and Determining Factors that May Lead to Perceived and Actual Anomalies

The Oklahoma Mesonet serves as a high-quality network for observing and understanding local and regional meteorology, with 120 stations located across the state of Oklahoma. With such an extensive network across the state’s wide variances in geography, climate, and terrain, certain trends, tendencies, and peculiarities are bound to emerge, eliciting fascination and even surprise. Recently, an interesting phenomenon has presented itself. Two of the network’s sites, located near the western Oklahoma towns of Chickasha and Fairview, are consistently reporting temperatures several degrees higher than surrounding sites less than twenty miles away. As Oklahoma Mesonet data is consistently quality-checked and each site has several thermometers, the question almost certainly does not lie in the quality of the data, but more likely in some currently unknown external factor. This research aims to compare these two sites with surrounding sites to first figure out how extensive the high-temperature anomaly is, if it even statistically exists. Once the anomaly and its extent are confirmed, the next focus of the research would be to investigate potential causes of the bias, whether natural, physical, or some combination thereof. Finally, the findings of this project could elicit further questions or potential areas of research, possibly in regards to weather station siting indices or trends to consider at other in-situ weather stations, whether within the Oklahoma Mesonet or beyond.