I just looked up the bio of our local forecaster. He's not a meteorologist! He's hosted game shows, disco dancing shows, even hosted the David Letterman show as a substitute host. He's been a disc jockey too, but he doesn't have a degree in the science of meteorology. Apparently he does write his own forecasts. Arktrees, you wrote: TV personalities who's primary job most of the time is to get viewers........ You are so right! I've never paid serious attention to forecasts before this year, but now that I have I can see, at least from my forecaster, it's all about hype. It could be a simple cold front moving through, but the way he describes it you'd think aliens were invading.

Plants that have been stressed (by a colder than normal winter) are likely blooming more in an effort to propagate to survive. It's just nature's way to ensure survival of a species. We've had a dry mild winter and my crystal ball has never worked well so I have no clue what the summer holds. Last summer was hot and hotter, dry at times, very rainy at others. I watered more than usual as the dry hot periods were longer than the rainy ones and only lost a few of the new plants I planted before we went away for 3 weeks. I'm hoping for my ideal garden climate where it rains gently all night every 5 days or so and is moderately hot during the day. Yes, I am a dreamer but realistically know that's unlikely to happen all summer. I mulched heavily, with bagged leaves I had saved, when the snow disappeared in January and hope that will help the trees that were stressed last fall by early and heavy frost. The green leaves were frozen on the trees before they dropped so the sap never went to the roots. I'm planting more in that area (shade bed) so will be watering and adding compost so I hope that helps the trees as well.

It's just my opinion, but I think we'll have some more of the wintry precipitation, at least a little bit. Hope I'm wrong. I can be patient while waiting for springtime to get here, but the thing I REALLY want most of all is to have adequate rainfall between June and Sept. If we can get that, I'll be doing a happy-dance ; )

Scott, I have such low faith in the models any more that I don't believe what they say when they say it. It doesn't matter what they have forecasted for us this year. We've consistently been both hotter and drier than the forecast, so I always look at the forecast and then assume we'll continue to be hotter than forecast and drier than forecast. Since very little rain has fallen here in our area the last 2 months, a lot of trees are dropping leaves as a survival mechanism. At first it was just the types of trees that really don't like the intense heat and dry weather---like sycamores, cottonwoods and redbuds, but now I'm even seeing the native persimmons, oaks and pecans dropping foliage. Obviously I can't water almost 15 acres. Even the trees in the yard, which has been watered regularly, are dropping leaves. If rain fell right now, and in a fairly decent amount, I don't think it would be enough to help them much now. We're in about our 15th consecutive month of drought here, so the trees are really hurting. I realize that's nothing compared to how long some people, like Jay for example, have been in drought, but it's hard to see the trees in bad shape for the third summer in a row. Our last good rainfall year here was 2010. Greatplains, I think that people who never have lived here in this region and dealt with the conditions we have just don't get it and never will. The way that our heat and lack of rain can combine to wreak havoc on plantings, even native ones, is beyond the comprehension and understanding of people who've never experienced it. Even a lot of the non-gardeners I know that do live here just don't understand how severe a combination the heat/drought can be on their plantings, and tend to put in landscape plantings that never will be happy on low irrigation to no irrigation. There probably are a lot of people from other regions who think we're all hillbillies and rednecks, and I don't let it bother me. How long would they and their gardens last here? I grew up in dry north central Texas and the weather I have here is as bad as it was there in dry years and probably a little hotter and drier than when we lived in Fort Worth. We're not going to pack up and move away, though, so I just have to live with it. I feel like every year the list of what can grow and survive in the soil we have here combined with the weather we've had since around 2003 is getting shorter and shorter. Water rationing is becoming a more or less permanent thing in many of the Texas areas south of us, but not so much in our part of OK yet. I remember when they used to enact water restrictions in Dallas and Fort Worth only once the water levels in the lakes hit a certain point. Now the watering restrictions are written into law to start on a certain date, no matter what the weather is doing. From there, the restrictions do tighten up based on certain conditions, but the restrictions are in effect even in wet years. When we are down there, I see both residential and commercial plantings that are incredibly dry and brown compared to how they looked 5 or 10 years ago. It almost looks like a lot of people have just given up and stopped trying in terms of keeping their landscaping looking good. More likely, though, they probably are doing what they can with whatever watering restrictions their communities have in place. We're pretty rural here so I suppose the demand for water is much lower overall than in more heavily populated areas that have more homes and residences per square mile. Of course, it depends on which municipal water supplier or water co-operative you belong to. Other water co-ops and companies have often had water restrictions in place, but not ours. In 15 years, I don't remember our water co-op ever rationing water or imposing watering restrictions of any kind other than asking people to reduce usage temporarily if a water main has broken or if a well has broken down and isn't pumping. Those are situations where you might have low water pressure for a few hours or even for a whole day. However, they have restricted membership, and that has prevented people from building houses near us at times. Our water co-op is incredibly well-managed and won't add new customers if there are not enough water wells to handle their water needs. New members have had to wait, at times, for a new well to be dug and brought online before they can buy into the co-op and get water service, though I think it has been a few years since they had to do that. Down here, you can water as much as you want any time you want, but the water is not cheap so you have to be willing to pay a big water bill if you're irrigating a lot in the dry months. I'm surprised how quickly parts of central and NE OK have dried out ever since y'all's heavy rain stopped falling...around, what, 3 or 4 weeks ago? If good rain doesn't come soon, y'all will catch up with us in terms of drought and low soil moisture. What often saves us here in southern OK in August or early September is for a nice tropical storm to hit Texas and send a plume of moisture our way. The last one that I remember which did that was Hermine three years ago this week. We got a ton of rain at our house, and we really needed it. It even refilled our ponds. Unfortunately, some of the parts of OK that got hit by Hermine's remnants also experienced flooding, so sometimes it seems like you can't win either way. We haven't had to mow our yard in several weeks now, except for the area just outside the sunporch, between the house and the garage. I keep that area watered so the ground won't crack enough to crack the water line. (The ground shifted and the water line cracked twice in 2011 and once in 2012, but this year the water line hasn't broken yet.) After I read this post this morning, I went and looked at the forecast models and the rainfall forecast and, at least for south-central OK, I don't have much hope for significant rainfall. Our high temperature has been under 100 degrees for two consecutive days now. It was 99 on Monday and 98 on Tuesday, and while that was only marginally cooler than the previous days, I could tell it was a little cooler. Or, maybe saying 99 instead of 100 or 103 just tricks your mind into thinking you can tell it is cooler. For the last 30 days, most of Oklahoma has not seen significant rain. Look at the map below to see how dry it has been. It looks awful. I've linked the map that compares the rainfall recorded the last 30 days to the 30-year-average for the same period. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: