Lynn, I am just so relieved to hear that the damage was minimal. (Although, of course, it never seems quite so minimal when it is your own place, and not someone else's.) If I were there with you now, I'd just give you a big hug and say how happy I am that you are OK, so consider yourself hugged long distance. : ) I know it is a terrible experience, especially as you're hurrying home and watching that big old plume of smoke, all the while wondering what has already burnt and what remains in danger. I am so proud of all the firefighters in Oklahoma--volunteer and professional--and the work they do. In our county, the 14 volunteer fire departments, the BIA and the forest service fire crews work together so well that it is just amazing. I'd like to second what you said, Lynn, about people supporting the volunteer fire departments. Most people assume that there is some kind of magical pot of money that the VFDs get from their city, county, state, or the federal goverment.....and that there is always enough money. That, of course, is not at all true. Most volunteer departments barely scrape by even though they are constantly working hard to raise money. On extreme fire danger days and extremely critical fire danger days, I am like a cat on a hot tin roof. I keep the fire radio turned on to the County Repeater so I can keep track of every fire in the county, instead of leaving it on the "pager" feature. And, I hate to get too far from home. We live in an area of rural mostly native pasture land too, and it can burn like mad. We've never had a fire as close to us as yours, but have had 2 on our land (but they were burning away from the house and outbuildings, and nowhere near fences of animals or anything). However, the ranch across the road catches fire at least a couple of times a year. (Their pastures back up to a highway and most of the fires start from the roadside.) For any of you wondering how to know when the fire danger is high, one of the easiest ways is to look at the NWS Enhanced Weather webpages. I check them daily, as they are informative and give info on all weather, and not just fire danger. On the enhanced weather page, the fire outlook is usually in one of the boxes along the right side of the page, near the bottom. Just keep scrolling down until you see it. You can click on it to enlarge it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enhanced Weather Webpage

The Red Flag Fire Warning for a few counties in western Oklahoma has been extended through 1 a.m. Saturday morning.

Jay, Y'all have the same fire danger today too. I heard about your fire danger on our local National Weather Service radio broadcast from Ardmore, about 25 miles north of us. It seemed odd to me that they were mentioning fire danger from an area geographically so far from us, but I figured it was because they needed to fill "air time" since you can't say much about "sunny, clear, and perfect weather again today. Chance of severe weather: zero percent". For a long time, we were in no man's land here too. When we first moved here in 1999, there was NO internet service available, the local TV stations were very hard to pick up even with a large antenna, and cell phone service was pathetic. We pretty much had to walk down to the road (300' from the house) to use our cell phones. I felt like we'd moved to the land that time forgot. Eventually, all three improved but it has taken years. Our then 14-year-old son wouldn't have survived the move to rural Love County without the DirectPC and DirectTV satellites we used to get internet service and TV reception. When we lived in Fort Worth, I always felt our weather forecasts were pretty accurate. Then, we moved here and I was just bewildered by how far off the forecasters could be. I don't necessarily blame the forecasters for that....we are in a very, very low-lying microclimate that's hard to forecast. So, through careful observation, I have learned that frosts occur here at our low-lying elevation even when they are not occurring in Marietta. I learned that our low temps here by the river could routinely go 10 degrees lower than the forecast in Jan.-April although that's not true the rest of the year, and the low temps have gone as low as 18 degrees below the forecast. (It was a shock to have an overnight low forecast of 50 degrees, and to go out in the morning and have frozen, dead tomato plants and a hard freeze.) In spring, nowadays I look at the overnight low and instantly assume we could go 10 degrees colder at a minimum and cover plants accordingly. I'm still having trouble understanding the rainfall. Based on 30-year averages, we should get 38" of rain here a year. I did a lot of research before we moved here, and found "average rainfall" data ranging from 38 to 48". However, most years we are thrilled to get 34", and have had several years when the rainfall was between 18" and 23". I suspect that, if they recalculate the 30-year averages at the end of the first decade of the 2000s, our "average" rainfall will drop from 38" to about 34". I hate that the wind is beating up your plants. We had those hot, drying winds last May in combination with the drought but I think the winds ended here in June and didn't last all summer. However, almost no rain fell. And, stink bugs which have never been a big problem here before, arrived in May of last year and I fought them all year long. I did have stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs in 2007, late in the year (August, I think), but not in the quantities that arrived last year in May. I also didn't understand how much of a "drought pocket" we were in here. It doesn't matter where rain is on the radar, it tends to go either west of us or east of us. It is like the rain reaches the Love County border and "can't" cross over the county line. It has taken me years to understand the drought patterns. Finally, this year a Noble Foundation researcher said that no matter how much rain falls, it only takes us three weeks of "no rain" here to fall back into a drought pattern. That backed up what I had finally figured out on my own. Of course, this year has been a rainy year so far, and I am grateful for the rain. I know from experience here, though, that heavy spring rainfall is usually followed by almost zero summer rainfall, so I am dreading the summer months before they even arrive. I had a lot more trouble with wind in the early years here. Now I have a lot more small trees, shrubs and flowers (not close enough to shade my veggies) that help serve as a wind break. on the west side, but can't do much with the south side because the driveway is there. I do grow vines on the garden fence, and once they attain some height, they help break the wind some too. My tomato and pepper plants are deliriously happy this week. Actually, they weren't totally thrilled at first. The first couple of days they had a little wilting by about 1 p.m. because they'd had mostly cloudy skies and almost no sun for over two weeks. They've adjusted though. The tomato plants are blooming and setting fruit. The pepper plants have just begun blooming. My largest unripe tomato is about the size of a tennis ball and we've already harvested some ripe tomatoes from container plants that I transplanted into large pots in February. I should start having ripe fruit from plants in the ground any time now because we have quite a few green ones. Of course, in the same way that a watched pot never boils, a watched green tomato doesn't turn red, so I am trying to ignore them and not obsess over when they are going to ripen. After three hard days in the garden, I am slowly regaining some control and it is starting to look like my garden again. By the end of the week, I think I'll be pretty happy with it overall. The mosquitoes, though, are the size of small aircraft. Dawn

Since everyone's had time to see this, I'm bumping it down and will put up a separate Fire Danger thread since there's a fire watch in effect.