We ended up with about 7 inches. I took this this morning.

Took this photo this morning from inside the garage.

click thumb twice foir bigger pic

{{gwi:1076734}}

Hope to get out today and take some photos.

randy

How do i post a pic?

Here are some pictures that can be enlarged by clicking:

My blueberry rows:

My Duke blueberries:

A doe watching me walk through the woods:

Our creek running fairly high:

No birds sleeping in this nestbox tonight:

Some ice from the freezing rain prior to the snow:

Here's my greenhouse. You can almost see it shivering!

Tulsacityfarmer,

You might get a free account from an online host like photobucket. You download your pics there and then paste the image url into your message here.

Here's a couple from our walk today.

click thumb twice for bigger pic

randy

argh, my picture disappeared...

lets try again

{{gwi:1076754}}

Moni, I see your tricycle and raise you a pony. ;^)

Moni, I just love the little trike.

Littledog, That horsey looks cold. Where is his horse blanket?

My oh my, y'all have a lot of damage and a big mess there. I think that elm is threatening to crush the little house.

Does anyone have blue skies and sunshine today? If they do, I want to go to their part of the state because it is very dark and gloomy here at our house. The freezing fog is so heavy it is 'falling' and landing on the previously clean and dry porch steps. (I cleaned all the ice and snow off of them yesterday.) I wore a red barn jacket out to feed/water the animals and the freezing fog did look like snow and it looked like it was falling. You could see little white pieces of freezing fog on the sleeves of my red jacket....they looked just like really, really heavy frost....but were suspended in the air or falling through the air.

Where is our sunshine, blue skies and warm weather?

Dawn

Here are two more taken by my oldest daughter from this morning at about 7:00am. The first is from an upstairs window and the second is from outside the garage. These visitors spend the nights on our lawn when the dog is kept in the garage. They were pushing through the snow to get the clover I planted back in Oct.

I am so glad I didn't get that ice. What a mess. I still have limbs all over in the field not cleaned up from the last two times. Nice pictures. I especially like animal pictures. My fish are hiding somewhere in here.

Not bad here today. Temp is 28 with no wind and partly cloudy. No sun, but very bright sky. I guessed that we had 10-12 inches of snow but after I went outside in it decided 10 was a closer number. The official total came in at 9, but it sure looked like more than that here.

The county made two passes with the snow plow yesterday morning and our neighbors said the road to town was pretty good except for our very steep hills which were still a little tricky. He was making sure he could get out because they were leaving for a cruise yesterday. LOL We have only been out long enough to feed the birds and clear the front porch.

I had cooked so much food in preparation for the possibility of losing power that I haven't even had to cook much all week, so I have had a little mini vacation from the kitchen.

We have been looking at the Lee Valley catalog on-line and wishing spring would hurry. I have my tomato seed on my desk, but still haven't decided which ones to plant this year. I got some really good ones from Jay and I know I have to plant them. I have 3 types of Goliath which I am going to try for the first time. I think my main crop will be Sioux this year, but I also realized yesterday that I didn't have any Arkansas Traveler seed and I always try to have a couple of those. Luckily they are usually on the local seed racks. I have lots of heirlooms to choose from after my two trips to Baker Creek, the seed swap, and my windfall from Jay. I will most likely plant a number of determinates in containers so I have room for more big plants in my garden area. I can keep containers outside in an area outside my fenced garden. So many choices and so lille space.....

I think I may delay planting my seeds a bit. I had planned to start some in mid February, but now I am thinking that will probably be two early since that is only a couple of weeks away. I did a small amount of winter sowing, but I can't even see the jugs right now. I know they are still there tho because I can see an elevated pile of snow. LOL

If I start anything mid February, it will probably be peppers. I usually start them at the same time as tomatoes, but just don't put them in the garden until a little later. Instead, I may start them and when they germinate, I will put them under lights and start my tomatoes because the shelf above the light seems to provide the perfect temp for the tomatoes to germinate. I guess I am a cheap gardener because I don't own a heat mat, but have really not found it necessary. I have plastic domes to cover the trays to hold in moisture until germination occurs. After I put them under lights, I throw an aluminum camp blanket over the top of the shelves to reflect the light and trap a little extra heat from the lights, until they are a few inches tall because I grow them in a cool room. The peppers seem to grow a little more slowly than the tomatoes so I can handle them inside for a little longer. I try to get everything outside during the day as early in the year as I can, but it is a big job to carry things in and out once they are in larger pots. I have plastic pots that are a perfect fit to have 8 in a seed flat, so once they get big enough to be in that size pot, it takes a lot of trips to get them out into the sunshine. I need a greenhouse.

Here's my aunt's north wall in SWOK, near Lawton. They're staying with us until their power and water comes back.

We almost made it up above freezing....it got up to 31 degrees today, but the low-hanging, dark clouds still made it feel awfully gloomy.

I'll be starting seeds of tomatoes and peppers on Super Bowl Sunday and then probably will start my cool-season crops a week or so later. I'm leaning towards a later plant-out date for cool-season crops based on the long-term forecasts for February.

Carol, I don't even think our county has a snowplow! Here, we just stay home until th roads clear up. Luckily for us that happened pretty quickly.

We did the same thing with cooking a lot to prepare ahead of time and we still have enough hambean soup and brisket to get us through another couple of 'no cooking' days.

The Lee Valley catalog is a great way to pass the time. I love their stuff.

I do the same thing with peppers---start them the same time as tomatoes but plant them out later since they really don't like cold soil or cool nights.

Why, oh why, does spring seem a million years away? And you just known Punxsutawney Phil probably is going to see his shadow on Tuesday (their forecast is for snow with a high temp of 35 and don't they drag that poor groundhog out early in the day?) and we'll have at least 6 more weeks of winter. Of course, even if he doesn't see his shadow (which should mean an early spring), we'll have six more weeks of winter anyway.

At this point, I feel like the arrival of spring temperatures is fairly irrelevant because our ground is so wet that we likely won't be able to plant for ages and ages yet. I bet I have to hold my onions a while after they arrive just so the ground can dry up. I think it is going to be a hard planting season, at least for the cool-season crops.

The screened-in porch helps cut down on how much I have to carry in and out the young plants in spring and I hope one of these days we can replace the screening with glass windows which would help even more. Every winter we cover the screens with 6 mm plastic and that helps keep the porch a little warmer, but not much.

Tigerdawn,

Is that ice stuck to the north wall of your aunt's house? I think you may have house guests for a few more days this week because the news I'm hearing out of SW OK is that progress is very slow.

And, y'all, I just checked the NWS website before I came here to the forum and we have freezing fog in tonight's forecast and rain mid-week. For northern OK, there's a slight chance of snow at mid-week. We ALL need to go on a cruise....and quickly!

Dawn

Yeah, it's about two inches of ice. The whole area is pretty devastated.

Many areas of the state have really suffered in the last decade from devastating ice storms. Our house and farm locations have only had moderate damage, but so many huge stretches have gotten scars that will not heal over for years. The one from Ardmore to McAlister about 10 years ago was the first I remember. Then there was a major one north of OKC a few years later. Then the devastating one that stretched from Muskogee to Springfield, and then the worst one I have ever seen two years ago. Hopefully this one will not be as widespread as those others.

Three years ago I attended the LPGA event in Broken Arrow and the golf course there was just beautiful. In 2008 half of the trees and canopies were gone and it will not be as pretty for many years. Very sad.

I was looking at the Weather Timeline on the OCS website and it is amazing how often ice storms hit our state. Everyone thinks about OK in connection with severe thunderstorms and tornadoes (and rightfully so) but we also have lots and lots of ice storms.

The worst storm in our county in terms of power grid damage happened about ten or twelve years before we moved here in 1999 and took out power in most if not all of the county.

I can't imagine living in an area where these storms hit over and over again every couple of years....or in some cases, a couple of times in one year.

I linked the Weather Timeline with the 2000-2007 data on the main page, but you can click on the link and then click on any decade on the left menu to look at the timeline for that timeframe.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Weather Timeline--click on the decade you want to view

trying again to post these pics. I am having trouble and this may not work.

big hackberry limb behind playhouse, barely missing swing frame

same hackberry behind playhouse

same hackberry ON playhouse

my globe willow

hackberry in front

another hackberry in front

here are a few of my damage pics. I am sick about it. My dad planted these hackberry trees in front of the house over 30 years ago. He went out in the woods and found them and dug them up and planted them for me. I have 4 out front and 3 are heavily damaged.

I have not left the place since Thursday. I know there is lots of damage everywhere. hate it.

Mo

Mo,

Those poor trees just look so sad. I bet you do have cabin fever too.

We had hackberries in our backyard in Fort Worth...not really by choice because they were there and were already huge when we bought that house. Here we have a few hackberries particularly on the edge of the woods near my garden but they are coming down one by one on their own. We've lost three of them to windstorms in the last two years. Perhaps they are somewhat weak-wooded?

Around the house, we've mostly planted oaks. They are slow-growing compared to a lot of other trees but they don't seem to break as easily in the windstorms here. At our house the trees in the woodlands are more likely to crash down during very severe thunderstorms because we rarely get enough ice here to bring trees down.

I think one of the worst things about losing trees or major portions of trees during a severe T-storm, tornado or ice storm is that it can turn a shady yard/garden into a sunny one and that makes it hard on the previously shaded plants that are suddenly exposed to more-or-less full sun.

After all the damage to thousands and thousands of trees by ice storms in this decade you have to wonder how a lot of these big old trees ever managed to attain their magnificent height.

Dawn