Our local meteorologists have been consistent with their predictions since Wednesday. They haven't changed them much, but we will see tonight which one is closer.

Channel 6 is the only one that has consistently predicted Tulsa to be -3 to -1 tonight.

Channel 2 has had it at about 0 to 2.

Channel 8 has the highest prediction with lows of about 2 to 4 tonight.

Channel 23 I cannot figure out at the moment, but have not been as low as Channel 6.

If it gets below 0 tonight, then I give it up to Channel 6.

Dawn - I note a hint of frustration in your post, and that's perfectly understandable. Personally, I'm ignoring any forecasts dealing with the weekend, and looking forward to next week. I may just stick my head under the covers and stay there until Tuesday.
Carol

I'm just aggravated that the forecast for Friday night was pretty consistently the same all week, until the 5 p.m. news on Friday, and then abruptly it changes. That is frustrating. I'm sure it changed because they expected cloud cover and instead it is clear, so the temp will be colder with no clouds to hold in the radiant heat. So, essentially, tonight we're paying for the sunshiney day we had today.

I'm not a cold weather girl. I grew up in Fort Worth where the 30s are considered 'cold'. When we moved here I figured that "once in a blue moon" (December HAD a blue moon on the 31st, LOL) we'd go down a tiny bit below 10 degrees. I never dreamed we'd ever get and stay as cold as we have this week. By the time we go above freezing on Sunday, we'll have been below-freezing for at least 4 days....or maybe 5....who's counting at this point? It is hard to keep track because our Mesonet station keeps going offline so it has incomplete data, but the thermometer on our porch hasn't been above 30 since...when...Wednesday? And why does Wednesday seem like a hundred days ago, and it was only two days ago? LOL

I definitely have cabin fever. I also have too many dogs and cats underfoot, but I'm not making them stay in the garage on these cold nights.

We're supposed to be in the 50s by Wed. or Thurs. and I am looking forward to that....or, at least, I was looking forward to that until he put rain in the forecast for Tues-Thurs-Fri with Fri. having a 50% chance of rain/snow. Friday is a real puzzler....the low will be something like 36 and the high something like 56, so why snow is in that day's forecast just baffles me.

I need a vacation from winter. And, speaking of that....parts of Florida have a chance of snow this weekend. I hope there aren't any 'tourists' there who thought they'd go to Florida this week to get away from the winter weather.

I'm fine. I'm calm. I'm cool. I'm gonna make a VooDoo doll and I'm gonna name it "Cold Weather" and stick pins in it. TCU lost their bowl game and it was painful to watch. UT lost their bowl game and it was very painful to watch. Tomorrow, the Dallas Cowboys play their play-off game and I'm thinking that Texas teams are not having a good week and that makes me nervous....now, see, if it was nice, average January weather, I could work out in the garden and yard and not even care about football.

That's the real thing.....I'm missing playing in the dirt, or, as we will be referring to it tomorrow morning, "The Frozen Tundra".

I'm so sick of this cold. We have a forecasted low of 8 for tonight and 10 tomorrow night. I just cannot take this for much longer. I'm just not used to the cold any more.

Diane, ready for defrosting.

Dawn,
You just need to curl up in a big arm chair by the fire with an armful of seed packets.
Now thats some good reading.
Bill

Like I've stated before I think they have good intentions and are good people. Just wish I could get paid for being wrong like they do.

Our official site here gave zero for a low last night. An Amarillo, TX station was saying we were -4. I didn't see that on my thermometer and evidently the official site didn't either. There are two more sites within 15 miles of Elkhart. One in north of the river and it is always some colder there.

At least their prediction for today was 26 and we ended up at 34. No wind and was a nice afternoon. Tonight is supposed to be 10-12 and then upper 30's to lower 40's tomorrow. Warm up is here. Winter is over and I'm going to start planting. LOL. Dreaming at least makes me feel better. Dawn odd that your lows may be as low as mine. After tonight the lows won't dip as low. That will be nice. Jay

Do I hear a little whining? LOL If you look at your Mesonet temp chart right now, you will see that we are the only blue county in the state and our current temp is minus two and it's only 10:30. It will be a cold one.

Spring will spring on us, and we will all be delighted, before long. :)

Dawn, meanwhile, quit looking for trouble. LOL

Moni

Gee, what happened to Global Warming?

I was sitting here, while up late sewing, feeling sorry for myself because we're at 16 until I opened Mesonet and, yep, there's that blue up there! Yow!

Diane

Carol, You do not detect a little whining. You detect a lot of whining. I hate this cold weather, and I really hate it when I'm looking forward to a "warm" night of 9 to 11 degrees only to have them take away that warm night with no notice and give us a colder night in return. LOL

It's not often that we have colder weather than Jay. I don't mind if his rain veers south and falls here instead of there, but Jay, you can keep these cold temperatures up there in Kansas with you. We don't want them.

Every time this week that I have checked the Mesonet temperature and wind chill maps, I've looked at your corner of the state and just shivered.

Bill, I've played with my seed packets all week. Looked at the pretty pictures. Read the info on the back. Sorted them. Put them back into the seed box so the dogs don't find them and chew them up. I've also looked through seed catalogs and garden magazines endlessly. I've spent all the time of the forum that I can, since talking about gardening is the next best thing to actually doing it. All these activities are pleasant ones, but I'd still rather be out playing the dirt.

Moni, Are you promising me that Spring will come again? Because right now, it seems so far away. LOL

Patty, I don't know, but I'm sure the Global Warming folks will try to find a way to blame the cold weather on Global Warming too.

Diane, One good thing about us being in the southern half of the state....there's almost always someone else in this state that's a lot colder than us....NOT that I'm wishing colder weather on anyone. When I look at some of the temperatures in northern OK, I feel like we're not so bad off after all.

Let's just be glad we're not in Wisconsin or Michigan or someplace that's really, really cold. I'm watching The Weather Channel at the moment and they've had a little sleet near Tampa Bay and it is snowing south of Jacksonville. Brrrr!

Our mesonet station held at 5 degrees this morning for a long time before briefly dropping to 4 for a few minutes and then coming back up to 5. The good news is that we should reach at least 28 degrees by this afternoon and that surely will feel pretty good. Our wind is finally calm so the wind chills should be pretty decent unless the wind starts blowing again.

Dawn

Apparently it's also cold down in southern Florida--it's so cold there the iguanas are falling out of the trees.

Here is a link that might be useful: Iguanas so cold they fall out of trees.

Dawn and Carol have surely figured out by now I'm not the selfish, greedy type. My Mother always taught me it is better to share and give than to be selfish, hoard and receive. I'm this way with garden seeds, time I volunteer, snow(that someone aske for a few weeks ago then whined-LOL), rain and also temps(both warm and cold). So not sure what else you expected.

It is 11 here now. Looks like we dipped to 9 around 3. Have had a W wind which warmed the temps some. But then the wind went back to NW and we dropped a degree. 37-40 today. We are on the western edge of it. Yesterday when I went to Liberal we had 34 for a high and they were 27. This morning we are 11 and they are 2.

Patty the other morning they were laughing on the radio as some of the Global warming group is claiming this is a result of global warming. Not sure how it can cause both warming and extreme cold.

Dawn stay warm. Your predicted temps for a few days look close to mine. I'm sending you the moisture we were to get Thursday and Friday so maybe that will help your whining. LOL. I hope to drive stakes for my greenhouse then start digging when the ground thaws. Need to mark it off and make sure it is square. Forgot to get stakes while in Liberal yesterday. Might make s trip while it is cold this morning. Will be close to 11 before warm enough to work without a heavy coat. Jay

Jay,

I HATE cold weather and that's one reason I like southern OK---because we often have days in Jan., Feb. and March with high temps in the 60s and 70s, sometimes in the 80s and every now and then even an odd day here or there in the 90s. If I wanted lows in the single digits and highs in the 20s I would have moved to Kansas or Nebraska. So, yes, I am whining about the weather a lot lately.

I always thought I wanted a white Christmas and then we had one and I discovered that while it looked pretty (just like those illustrations on Christmas cards!), it was messy and felt miserable. So, I'm over the whole snow thing. My sister had a perfect White Christmas in Fort Worth---it snowed on Christmas Eve and was gorgeous and then by 8 or 9 a.m. on Christmas morning, it was quickly melting away. Within a couple of hours, you couldn't even tell snow had fallen there. I loved the snow here while it was falling, I loved walking on it and hearing it crunching beneath my feet. I didn't love the endless mud and slush and mess that turned our driveway in a river of mud and left us parking on the shoulder of the road in front of our house and walking up to the house through the front pasture, which was pretty mushy and slushy and squishy itself.

We have a new driveway now and Elvis assured us when he put it in that he used a form of aggregate/gravel that will not wash out. We'll see. Our first driveway lasted 12 years, so I cannot really complain and might have lasted longer if we hadn't had ridiculous amounts of rain in 2009.

Keep your moisture up there this week 'cause we don't need it! I'd like to see all the mud dry up. We've been good and muddy for a long time now. Something else I never thought I'd see....ice on the Red River.

Stay warm working outside. I'm staying inside until it gets up to at least 20 degrees.

Dawn

Dawn, I hate the cold, too. And, when my Minnesota-born husband mentions - just mentions - wanting to move back to northern Minnesota, I cringe. I believe I could handle the cold, but not for the 7 or 8 months they experience. He says you just get used to it, but I'm way too old to get used to that. Our projected highs for tomorrow are above freezing, which we haven't seen for over a week, and the temps continue to rise from there. yay! I would love to see a good rain to melt all the snow, but I fear the ground would be saturated, so I'll just let nature decide what to do.

I have some zone 8 plants which have persisted for the last 9 years, and I worry they won't survive this cold spell. They're ornamentals, but dear to my heart, so I still worry.
Carol

We had zero two nights, Thursday and Friday and 10 degrees for a couple nights before that. DH and I have lived in Ok for 41 years, but that just isn't enough time to erase the memory of winters in Southern Calif where we met. It did get sorta cold there--28-30 for a few nights in midJan evry few years.

While my granddaughter was with me this week, we decided to put the plant bench to good use, so I plugged in the heating cable to warm up the sand and a day later we planted trays of lettuce, spinach, mustard, carrots (for the tops in salad) and then tucked some small onion and garlic bulbs in that had started to sprout under the sink. I won't start any of my garden transplants for 5 weeks so by that time, I should have been able to snip quite a few of my winter greens to liven up salads. Wish I had some garden cress for something really zingy, but don't.

Have you ever used your starting setup that way, Dawn? Anybody?

To be honest, the harvest isn't that great, but at least I get to see growing things during the winter. And my flowers are still perking along on the glassed porch. Begonias, impatiens, geraniums are all blooming and the ferns are lovely and full, so when it's warm enough out there--hasn't been for a couple weeks; I only heat it to 40 degrees--I go out and dream about the greenhouse I plan to have next year.

Carol,

I've lost every zone 8 plant I've planted here, so I just don't chance it any more. I lost most of them on a night it went down to 1 degree unexpectedly, but lost others due to a very abrupt temperature change---from the 50s during the day (and no freezing nights that fall) to 8 or 9 degrees that night. Because it had stayed insanely warm very late into autumn, the plants were not acclimated to cold weather and bit the dust.

At least this year, we've had lots of gradually-cooler weather, so all your plants ought to be well-acclimated and have a better chance of surviving.

Dorothy,

I haven't used it that way, but I've thought about doing it. I have to fight the cats to keep them out of the seed-starting flats on the light shelf. Otherwise, I've thought about growing salad greens or microgreens on the light shelf all winter.

I also learned that I cannot raise catnip or catmint from seed in a flat. I have to put it inside a large, sturdy, locked rabbit cage (not occupied by any rabbits) so the cats cannot destroy the seedlings as soon as they sprout.

Is Glenn about to retire? Is that why a greenhouse is in your future? I think I remember you mentioning that the two are linked somehow.

I like having something (anything) green and growing in winter, but have to keep my potted plants in the garage or house during prolonged cold spells. One of these days we'll turn the screened-in back porch into a sunroom, and then I'll have more room for winter plants.

Dawn

Dawn, Glenn will retire next June and yes the plan is to build the greenhouse and have it ready by next Oct. I ordered Elliot Coleman's Winter Harvest book that you recommended and have been confirmed in my idea to have an unheated greenhouse and to continue to heat the glassed porch on the house. I don't have to have tomatoes in the middle of the winter, but if he can raise spinach and lettuce, I should be able to as well, and some bokchoy and arugula and chinese cabbage and some winter radishes. And then also use it to harden off transplants before taking them to the garden.

IF you have that much trouble with cats getting into the light shelf, how do you manage to start your plants? Are the cats somewhere else by then?

I don't think any of the mesonet stations in the immediate Tulsa area got close to zero, so I'll give a pat on the back to Channel 8 and a thumbs down to Channel 6.

The entire family played on the pond today.

Dorothy,

How wonderful that Glenn is so close to retirement and that y'all will be able to have the greenhouse....what fun!

I bet you'll be able to grow anything you want within reason...though probably not melons or southern peas and other heat lovers.

You know, if you wanted to heat it, I know Randy has mentioned before that he heats his with a wood stove.

The cats are big brats. When I first start seeds, they want to lay on top of the clear dome over the freshly-seeded flats. I just squirt them in the face with water in a little spray bottle and, if that doesn't work, I add a drop or two of TKO orange oil or Realemon lemon juice because they don't like it. After they are spritzed in the face a couple of times, they mostly stay off the plant shelf and away from the plants....as long as the plants are not catnip or catmint.

When I transplant catnip and catmint into the ground, I put tomato cages over them so the cats can't squash the plants flat before they have a chance to grow. Once the plants are tall enough that they are branching out, I remove the cages and the cats occasionally find the catnip or catmint and roll on them or chew on them, but they really don't hurt them too badly.

I try to keep the door to the guest room closed when the plant shelf has plants on it, but sometimes other people in this family leave that door open and then I have to scold the human being who left it open and the cats who seized the opportunity to go explore the plants on the seed-starting shelf.

I have one cat who likes to bite seedlings off, especially while they are quite small. So, even though it is only one cat who usually misbehaves, they all are basically banned from the guest room from Feb.-May. Heaven help us when a guest actually comes to visit during that time, because they have to be reminded (nicely, of course) to close the door to the room when they leave it. LOL

The cats are not a problem during the day because they spend their days outside, but they have to be inside the house or garage at night to stay safe from predators so sometimes they get into the plant room and have a little kitty cat wild party.

I used to leave them on the screened-in porch all night and they liked that, but then a racoon tore a hole in one of the screens to come inside after the cats (Tim got the raccoon before it got a cat) and that was the end of them using the screen porch as a sleeping porch.

Dawn