Yes, so in that sense, it would be so much better to get rain than snow, wouldn't it? I don't expect much here, but we had a few tenths of an inch with the last winter storm about 10 days ago, and a lot of it fell as rain before the rest of it fell as freezing rain, sleet and snow. January is always my county's driest month, historically, so any drop of moisture that falls is much appreciated. I wouldn't say we had a huge amount of moisture....almost 3" of snow on top of maybe 2 or 3 tenths of an inch of rain, but it is still very muddy here, so anytime you have mud in January, it is an oddly comforting thing. (Well, it is if you're a gardener.) Dawn

Well, I'm shocked. I thought if anyone was going to get frost out of this, it would be me, sitting up here almost in KS. Sunday night I covered all that I could and hosed down the trees. Thankfully on Monday morning the temperature gauge in my back yard said 40 and everything looked fine, even the things I didn't remember to cover. I have planted the last of the tomatoes I started from seed last January and a few of the plants I had set out 'way too early have just started to 'come out of it'. So if I lose these, I will have to start over with seed I have left. One of the Black Krims, that was reduced down to just its main stem -- no leaves -- had started making new leaves. I was so happy to see that since I had sold all the Black Krims I had left. My peach, plum and apple trees are full of baby fruit. I, too, am getting just plain annoyed at this stupid weather! I've got stuff to plant! I did notice one interesting thing, though, that I might pass on. I set my tomato plants out two different ways. One row I just dug the hole as deep as I could get it and popped my newspaper potted plant in, watered and covered. Another row I tried digging a trench, laying the plant down in the trench, watered, and covered all but about the top 6" of the plant with earth. It was this group that didn't make it past that first frost. Was it because the trench was not as deep as the hole that I dug for the ones that went in straight up? Was it because there was less of the main stem exposed afterwards to set more leaves? Or was it simply that they were planted in different raised beds, and the trench-planted tomatoes were planted the day after the standing tomatoes were? I'd be interested to know if anyone has tried the trench method and what they thought of it. I only tried it this year because my plants had gotten so big. Monday night was a little warmer than Sunday night had been so I didn't cover anything. I guess I lucked out on this one. I hope this is the end of the frosts, I don't get any fruit off my trees two years out of three and I've really got my heart set on doing some major canning this summer. Now that I've retired, we're living without the income I brought in, and so we've tightened our belts somewhat. Someone once said people would be surprised to know how little money they actually needed to live on, if they did it the right way. I'm having a little trouble with that, but it's coming along. Since I don't work, I hardly use my little Rendezvous and am thinking of selling it. That will reduce our insurance bill. We try to "batch" our trips in order to cut down on our gasoline consumption. And there are a lot of little ways we are trying to reduce our consumption of utilities. I am really counting on a good yield from my garden this year to help out with the grocery bills, and I'll be having another plant sale in a couple of weeks to help defray the cost of the seeds and garden stuff I bought this spring. Nobody has figured out a way to tax us for NOT spending money -- Uncle Sam and the state taxes us on money we earn, then our city and state taxes us on money we spend. But ol' Mother Nature can sure throw a monkey wrench in the best of plans, both with gardens and utility consumption -- oh, and damage costs when she throws her 'temper tantrums'.

This afternoon while I was out playing in the mud in my garden and covering up all my plants, the NWS issued a Frost Advisory for part of NE OK. If you are in NE OK, you can see it at the Tulsa NWS office's webpage, linked below. Heather, Thanks for the advective/radiational explanation. Radiational cooling always seems to give us either worse frost or at least more plant damage--and in the early years here, I wasn't good at figuring out it would happen. Now, I cover up stuff more often but the end result is less damage. I've discovered the floating row cover is my favorite garden helper. With your new plants, I'd go ahead and cover them up if you have something to cover them up with. It wouldn't hurt the plants and might prevent another setback. I love my wax myrtles but I might have chosen something else if I'd realized how often they'd have cold damage, which is about every other year here in southern OK. It was so cold out there in the garden with light rain falling on me and the wind blowing, no sunshine and I was ankle deep in wet clay that kept trying to suck my Crocs off my feet! It had better frost tonight or I'll be irritated that I spent all that time covering up plants for nothing. (Well, not really irritated because at least I can sleep well knowing the plants are covered.) Jay, They're saying 36 for us, so I do expect some frost. Last night we only went 1 degree colder than forecast so maybe tonight we'll be similarly close to our forecast low. Your place often goes warmer than expected, but mine tends to go lower than expected. At least we both know what to expect. I would like to resume planting by Wed., but we've had 2.7" of rain since the latest round began very early Sunday morning, so now I have water standing everywhere. I'm not complaining because we surely do need the moisture, but it does mean I won't be able to plant anything else for a while. We'll probably be 85 or 90 in 4 or 5 days and then the mosquitoes will start hatching out. One thing about our weather is that it changes so quickly you don't get bored with it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Tulsa Office of the NWS Webpage

Jay, It looks good here for the next couple of weeks too, until about mid-Oct., assuming we don't have a surprise frost here tonight. (It is possible because we stayed cooler than forecast all day today and our place is in a very low-lying frost pocket.) I'm not surprised NE OK has a frost advisory because they have had some really cool mornings lately, but seeing the advisory come as far down south as Pottawatomie County did surprise me a bit. I guess the sulphurs and monarchs sent everyone a message by veering towards the west while migrating, because northern/eastern/and parts of central OK are going to be very cold tonight, but the monarchs have been making their way through the parts that are staying warmer. Hmmm. What did the butterflies know and when did they know it? Were they hitching a ride on the wind currents or were they warning us of impending cold in the eastern portion of the state? As an aside, I went several days last week without seeing a hummer, then suddenly, we had hummers all over the place on Fri.-Sat. and none today, so I think the Fri.-Sat. bunch of hummers were migrating to get out in front of and stay ahead of the colder weather. Larry, I'm in a low-lying frost pocket in the Red River Valley and we have had very early frosts some years hit plants without damaging them, likely because the frost was on the plants only for the briefest of periods. I've also had some tender annual flowers survive 3 or 4 light frosts before a hard frost finally got them. It also is possible you had light wind and he didn't, so frost settled on his plants and not yours. A friend of our who lives about a mile from us but on much higher ground never sees as frost as early as we do. I'm even worried about our forecast lows here since we went 5 or 6 degrees lower than forecast last night. With a forecast of 44 for tonight, a dip 6 degrees colder than that would give us the right temperature range to allow frost to form if the other conditions were right. Our coldest temps lately occur shortly before sunup, roughly between 6 and 7:15 a.m. and I am usually awake by 6 a.m., so I'll run outside and watch to see if frost has formed or is forming first thing in the morning. If it has or is forming, I'll hose the frost off the plants or turn on the sprinkler or something to try to mitigate the damage. We just returned from Lowe's a short while ago, and our Lowe's still has tons of warm-season plants, including many tomato plants in 6" pots, and they weren't covering up anything so maybe they aren't worried about it. If I were them, I would be a little concerned. Keith, You'd better hope your stink bug buddies freeze. The alternative is that they are cuddling to stay warm (like some people do during an ice-storm-induced power outage) and will be giving birth in spring to many babies "made" during this cold night. That's a worst possible case scenario, you know. I am not liking how cold it feels here right now. It feels really chilly now that the sun is almost down and I am going to watch and see how many degrees we drop between now and 10 p.m. Dawn