Keith, That's a great article. My introduction to fire behavior came during the drought of 2005-2006 when we had only a little under 19" of rain in 2005 and our "winter fire season", which normally is mostly a spring season, began in October. We were in extreme to exceptional drought. How dry was it? Tree roots burned underground. Some wind-driven fires required 20 to 30 fire departments (our county has 13 VFDs at the time) including firefighters from Texas. It was horrendous. It continued into 2006. I cannot even explain the impact except to say that our tiny, 3 to 4 year-old VFD went from about 40 calls a year to over 240 in the worst year of that drought. We never slept. This year, we have had sporadic "bursts" of grass fires that come in spurts. Now that all the vegetation is dry and dormant, it is happening a lot more often than it was in October or November. In fact, our VFD has been out with six others at a fire all afternoon and just cleared from that fire a few minutes ago. We are fairly wet here, but dry dormant vegetation doesn't retain moisture and having wet, muddy ground means the firefighting brush trucks often get stuck in the mud. That's happening at pretty much every fire in our county since it rained hard last week and the week before. The folks in SE OK are in serious trouble and will have a very severe winter fire season. So will the counties just across the Red River from us. (They already are.) Been there before...not only in 2005-2006 but also the last half of 2007, 2008 and the first 4 months of 2009. I dread it. Every morning, I check several fire sites, including the fire weather forecast from the NWS and the OKFire site available via the Mesonet before I come to GardenWeb. Our firefighters know I watch those fire weather websites like a hawk and I let them know when they're facing a High to Extreme Fire Weather Day, or let them know when our county's fire danger ramps up from Low or Moderate to High, Very High or Extreme. The worst fires I've heard of lately have been in central OK where several recent fires have spread to and damaged/destroyed homes and other structures. It is going to be a long winter. Rain won't help much, if any, at this point. In our county, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index is very low because we have had lots of rain since September. However, some counties have KBDIs in the 500s, and that is very serious stuff because the KBDI tells you how intense your fires are likely to become. I don't know that 2011 will be as bad statewide as 2005-2006 was, but for the very dry portions of the state, including parts of central OK and southeastern OK, it has that potential. Rainfall can be deceiving because a lot depends on when the rain falls. We were dry and burning like crazy here in Love County in Jan-April of 2009. Then, on either April 29th or 30th, 12.89" of rain fell. Now, if you had looked at our rainfall total for 2009 at the end of April, you would have thought we had grear rainfall, but that was not really true---what we had was great rainfall on one day only. I say it isn't that bad here yet and it isn't, but there are fires in our county virtually every day. We had an awfully bad one on Jan. 2nd and another pretty aggressive one today. I wouldn't want to be a firefighter in SE OK this winter because they are going to be incredibly busy. Dawn

I was really hoping the D-4 category would be some other part of SW OK, but we got less than a tenth of an inch from those storms last week so I'm not surprised it's here. I'm barely over the line into D-4, so I guess it could be worse. Grandfield hasn't had a tenth of an inch of rain in 167 days! Leslie

Linked below is the map of the entire country. Texas remains 100% in drought, which I find astounding. It is hard to imagine an area that large is still 100% in drought, but it is. Here is a link that might be useful: USA Drought Monitor Map

Carol, I ought to feel guilty but I don't. There were a couple of years in the early to mid-2000s when the Texas drought overflowed the border into Love County and I was in D-3 drought and none of the rest of you were. Twice! So I think Mother Nature is trying to make it up to me this year. : ) I can assure y'all that the fact that the southern half of Love County is not in drought is deceiving. It is only because we had a bunch of rain at the end of May/beginning of June. Despite that rain, the ponds are empty, the creeks are low and some have stopped running, the ground is cracking, etc. etc. etc. I believe we look better on paper than we do in real life. Quailhunter, You certainly have my sympathy. I have had plenty of years just like the one you're having now, and it isn't fun. I hope y'all get some meaningful rain soon, but I fear you might not. My experience is that once drought sets in, it feeds on itself and becomes increasingly worse. What really worries me is that it seems like our deep soil moisture levels and our ground water bounce back less and less, recoving more poorly after each successive drought year. At one point our property had lots of springs and a swamp. Even our big pond was spring-fed. Now, the swamp is not swampy, most of the springs have quit running at the rate of 1 or 2 a year and our big pond is empty more often than not because the spring that fed it dried up after successive droughts in 2005, 2006 and 2008. Now the former swamp is just dry, brown vegetation where is used to be lush and green. One of our creeks was a spring-fed creek, but then that spring dried up and now it just catches runoff every now and then when heavy rain falls. None of our ponds hold water for long even after very heavy rainfall. The successive droughts have just ruined our formerly wet areas where frogs and other amphibians once thrived. Here's the U.S. Drought Monitor for Larry, Helen, Jay and others who live outside Oklahoma. Kansas and Arkansas have a horrifying level of drought this week. It is getting worse there so very quickly now. It is very disturbing to see how many states have drought conditions....all the way north to Canada. I've never seen this much of the USA in drought conditions at the same time. Granted, the U. S. Drought Monitor has been in use for only about a dozen years, but I bet we have no record of drought being this widespread across the country before since they began keeping weather records. If the current conditions continue or worsen, I bet this year will be worse than 1936 even thought of being, and that's saying a lot. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: USA Drought Monitor july 10, 2012