I hope everyone is safe from the fires. The NWS says that we are at 73 degrees and they have issued a winter storm watch. How weird is that?

The large fire in Logan County is about 18 miles east of us and the smoke was visible all afternoon. The last news report we heard around 6:30 pm said at least 12 buildings have been lost and the fire was still out of control. There was a small one at the end of our street this morning but it was taken care of by the Oak Cliff FD, thank goodness. Scary stuff.

Suzie

I missed all the fire news this afternoon because I was out at......a fire, of course. Ours was in northwestern Love County near Orr and we had 15 fire depts. out there, including 4 from Carter County.

Our fire burned only 2500 acres of brush and grass with some large trees and the firefighters halted it in its tracks by doing a strategically placed backburn. Had the backburn failed, we would have lost a power sub-station.

Carol, I saw that weather watch and it is weird, but not unusual. Often, a big cold front here is preceded exactly by what we had today....an abnormally hot day or two.

Suzie, I hope they can get that fire under control. I cannot believe how many fires you can still see on the radar tonight

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Wildfire Images on Latest Radar

Last night when driving home around 7:30...there was still the distinct smell of burn in the air. Between Norman and Moore they had a large grass fire that was still smoldering this morning. When we were driving to the South Side of OKC this morning for GD basketball game - it was an obvious haze to the north of the smoke that was just hanging in the air...and there was another fire burning somewhere around the airport that was visible.

We're just way too dry...and it's scary to think of just what could/would start a fire in these drought conditions.

Paula

You guys stay safe!

That's one thing I won't be missing about Oklahoma...

Diane

Diane,

For years, dating back to when I was a teenager, we'd drive through Oklahoma going someplace on vacation and there would be the signs along the turnpikes that would say "DO NOT DRIVE INTO SMOKE ON ROADWAY". We'd always shrug and wonder what in the world those signs were all about.

After we moved here in 1999, I found out pretty quickly what those signs meant when a massive wildfire in the Davis/Turner Falls area early in the 2000s burned about 50,000 acres. It burned for days and we had smoke, smoke, smoke here forever even though we're a couple of counties away.

Here in Love County, we really had nothing like that until 2005, but now we have these kinds of wildfires almost every year, with our worst years having been 2005-2006, August 2007 through April 2009, and starting up again now. I don't know why it seemed to get so much worse after 2005, but in terms of wildfire we've seen a lot more since then.

We're so dry now that rain won't help because dormant vegetation doesn't absorb the rainfall and dries up a few hours after the rain stops.

Our craziest "wildfire" here came when the pastures were covered with sheets of sleet and freezing rain. A power line snapped, hit the ground, melted the ice and set the grass on fire. When the fire pagers went off, we thought it was a joke. It wasn't.

I wonder if you will have any odd weather there? Maybe periodic flooding of the river during snowmelt/spring? You may have escaped the wildfires of the southern plains, but I'm sure you'll discover some sort of weather challenges there.....in addition to the shorter growing season that likely will drive you crazy when we start planting here and you are still frosty there.

Dawn

Dawn, I remember seeing those signs when I was a kid and we lived in the Missouri Ozarks. I even clearly remember driving through very scary smoke when I must have been pretty little.

In OK, we only had one fire really, really close -- right across the road from us because the fella running cattle had been welding fence earlier that day. He left and I started smelling something. Yep, blew up into a huge fire quickly with all of those cedars along the fenceline. We lived directly uphill, just a very short distance, from it and I had things (and people) ready to hit the road ASAP. Fortunately, the volunteer FD finally showed up and were able to get it out. Scared the bejeebers out of me, though, as they weren't exactly the most reliable FD in the world. I think half of them were drunk that night. LOL

Flooding is certainly a problem in the general area but I made sure to check the 100-year and 500-year flood plain maps, along with everything else I could find and we'll be fine here, according to them. Hubby works on the other side of the river, though, so I imagine we'll get stuck apart at some point in time if it gets to flooding too badly. At least this far north on the Mississippi, it's a slow, creeping flood for the most part. Down further south and along the Missouri River, it can be a fast, scouring flood. That's the scary stuff to me.

It's always something no matter where you live, I suppose.

Diane