Ok, I'm a little confused. Maybe someone can explain to me if I'm reading that link wrong. But from the graphic I saw it looked there was a higher percentage of the state in the "no drought" than last week and less percentage of the state in the rest of the categories....help?

Okienurse,
The way I read it there was 76.93% of the state in the no drought class last week. This week there was 31.44% in the no drought class. The D0-4 group went from 23.07% to 68.56%. Which indicates they have move a large portion of OK into the abnormally dry classification. If you look closely it shows a Y shape which curves around and has me in Class 1 drought but just south of me in class 2. Which is fairly accurate. But if we don't get anything in the next 2 weeks we will be back in class 2 or 3. Jay

So this is what it feels like to be yellow! I don't like it!

Okienurse, Jay explained it perfectly. To see the change, click on the link below to see last week's map. See how most of Oklahoma is in white, indicating no rated drought category? Then go back and look at this week's map in the original post on this thread. See all the yellow? All of us who went from white to yellow now are officially in drought as categorized on this map.

Many of us will find ourselves singing the "it is too dry song" for weeks or even months before we're officially moved into D-0. By the time they put my area into "Abnormally Dry", it is so dry our ground has cracks 3/4-1" wide, our ponds are dry or mostly dry and we've been feeling like we are back in drought for some time.

Jay, I don't understand how they can move your area out of drought so quickly when it usually takes them forever to put your area into a drought category to begin with. Did we not wait for years for them to put y'all into D3 the last time?

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1102323}}

Dawn I agree. We are still green but things aren't growing much. I have started watering the trees earlier this time. I've seen a lot of the delayed drought stress effects on my pines and spruce. The pinions have never wavered. We got that inch or more of rain that didn't reach very far south and what some are attributing to our rating not being raised. Jay

I didn't even realize we were in D2. It would probably take a lot of rain to move us out of it, though.

Leslie

Carol, If you think yellow is bad, wait until you hit that deep dark red of D4. One year, the drought in Texas came up just into Love County (well, you know, we stick down into Texas, so how could the drought not get us too) and we were at D4 and everyone else on this forum was not in drought and was just fine. I whined endlessly about the drought, and I am sure everyone thought I was just a big baby. lol

Since then, exceptional and extreme drought has hit increasingly larger parts of the state with shocking regularity. The folks in the panhandle rarely seem to make it out of drought at all any more.

Ever since about 2005, our climate here in OK has gone haywire. Of course, this is not the first time---just look at the Dust Bowl years for confirmation of that. Still, the years before 2005 after we moved up here were fairly pleasant. In 2002 and 2004, it seemed like spring lasted half the summer. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way and summer intrudes into half of spring.

Leslie, I can keep track of how much rain my area needs in order to claw its way out of drought by looking at the Keetch Byram Drought Index. It is a fire-related product, but when I look at my KBDI number, I convert it to inches. If our KBDI is 400, I know we need a minimum of 4" of rainfall basically all at one time or over a couple of days to put decent moisture back in the soil. That is an oversimplification, but it gives me a ballpark figure of the minimum amount of moisture needed. And, I don't know if that KBDI-to-inches conversion would work in everyone else's soiltype, but it works with our soil. Of course, the minute the moisture falls and takes our KBDI back down to a low number, the evaporation and drying up begins, so it is a constant battle to stay out of drought in summer.

Technically, the KBDI is a predictive tool for firefighters, but I find it a handy tool for gardeners. If Tim starts fretting and worrying over how much water I'm using, I tell him our current KBDI and he shuts right up! That's partly because once he is focused on the KBDI he is running numbers through his head estimating how much money our VFD is going to be spending on fuel and truck repairs fighting fires in a drought year. It makes him forget the money his wife is spending to water the garden.

I'll link the KBDI map and you can see how bad things are in various parts of the state. A KBDI of 0 indicates fully saturated soil and a KBDI of 800 indicates a total absence of moisture. Last year, for the first time I've ever noticed, some places in OK hit 800 and kept on going, reaching 800-and-something before someone either froze their number in place or rain fell and dropped it back down.

In general, you would see KBDI numbers of 0-200 in spring, 200-400 in summer, 400-600 in fall, and 600-800 in winter, assuming rainfall is scarce. In my county, we'll hit 400 in a couple of days. Some of OK is well beyond 400 already and summer isn't even here yet.

What I have learned from comparing the conditions in my own garden to the KBDI is that once we hit about a KBDI of about 500-550, I cannot put enough moisture in the soil to keep the plants happy and producing. I can keep them alive, but not necessarily producing. By the time my county's KBDI has hit the 500s in summer or fall, I am too busy going to fires to work in the garden anyway and essentially abandon the garden because I'm not here to do anything in it or with it.

I had somewhat high hopes for today because we started out coolish (like 74 or 75 degrees when I woke up around 5 a.m.), cloudy and with a forecast high of 89. Later in the day, they changed that 89 to 91. So far? We've hit 96 degrees. Have I mentioned I hate the weather? : )
Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Keetch Byram Drought Index Map

I have been putting out soaker hose this afternoon. Some years I never bother because I don't have to water much so I just do it by hand. This is not going to be one of those years and I am wishing I had done it when I planted. I only got two down and I have 6 total. After that I will either water by hand, or go buy more hose. I may make a new decision after I see the water bill. LOL It would also be simpler if I planted in straight rows.

Al was looking at one of the Sungold plants this morning and saying that he couldn't wait. I said, "OK here is a sample" and gave him one tiny ripe Matts Wild Cherry. So my first ripe tomato was the size of my thumb nail and I can't even take credit for that one since Dawn gave me the plant. Since she starts plants a couple of weeks before I do, I know mine can't be far behind. I have lots of fruit set, but nothing close to ripe. Since I normally don't have tomatoes until the last week of June, I sure can't complain about what I am seeing so far.

My apologies Dawn...it must be my fault since I moved here in 2005 LOL. I'd like to have one of those seasons were spring lasts halfway through summer.

I agree with Carol--yellow sucks. I can fit my pinky finger down into the cracks in the dirt along the side of the house--and we live at the bottom of a bowl surrounded by hills in two different directions. Ugh. Feel bad for everyone in red.

We have several giant pecan trees on the back property line that sit along the creek (or what should be a creek but there's no water in it right now) and I noticed today one of them is brown--dead brown. I'll admit it depressed me. Those trees have been here longer than anybody who lives around here--they've survived well all this time and now one of them up and dies.

After that I took a walk around to the back of the corn patch to look at George's pumpkins. They, at least, seem to like the weather so far. I just stared at those big ol' leaves and dreamed of pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie! They're bigger than they've ever been this time of year.

My patio tomato has a ton of fruit and we've picked a couple of ripe tomatoes from it. 1 other is blushing. The rest are green but a good size. My Romas really took off this week and my CP is just climbing away.

Ok, I didn't see that the map on the link was for last week, and not this week, so I was seeing last weeks data as current. I didn't see a map for this week....does that make sense..:)

I'm a little slow on the uptake some days.

Sonya

Jay,

Sometimes green plants are deceptively dry. I am seeing more and more of a sort of delayed-onset of drought damage every day. Some plants that initially greened up and looked fine as recently as 2 or 3 weeks ago now are totally brown. That includes all the willows on the banks of the big pond, but since they're trash trees, I don't care if they all turn brown and fall down...which is exactly what they're doing.

Carol, We've always watered with a combination of hand-held hoses, drip irrigation lines and soaker hoses. Sometimes I use a sprinkler for the grass. Next week I am going to pull all the soaker hoses out of the garden and replace them with dripline so that everything in the big garden and the Three Sisters Garden will be watered with driplines. Then, I'll use the former garden soaker hoses for the grass. Actually, I am not especially inclined to water the grass, but the trees growing in the yard will need to be watered, so that means the grass gets some water as well. Since I plant in grid patterns and not straight rows, replacing the soaker hoses with dripline will be a nuisance since the plants already are so big, but in future years it won't be too bad since I'll put the lines down before I plant the warm-season stuff.

I'd rather stand and water with a hand-held hose because that makes me slow down, stand still and pay attention to what is happening in the garden, but as you noted, this is not going to be one of those years where hand-watering is adequate, or even practical.

Congrats on the first tomato. Give yourself credit for producing it. All I did was start the plant. You're the one who planted it and kept it going and brought it into production.

Our tomato harvest has exploded in the last couple of weeks, so your tomato explosion shouldn't be too far away. Sometimes I have to remind myself it is only May because, harvest-wise, it feels like mid-June. For dinner tonight, I'm going to make spaghetti sauce using tomatoes and other veggies from our garden. While we often have fresh-eating tomatoes in May, we don't normally have enough fruit ripe all at once for me to make a big pot of pasta sauce this early in the year, so I'm excited that I'll be making sauce tonight.

MJ, We are not going to blame you for the weather, but thanks for stepping up and offering to take the blame. lol

It was a drought year when we found a bought this land, and a drought year a couple of years later when the house was built and we moved here. So, you know, we knew exactly what we were getting into. Then we had several good rainy years...about every other year....and I started thinking at least every other year would be nice and rainy. Unfortunately, that has not necessarily been true. One drought year is bad enough, but if you run a couple of them consecutively, the second or third consecutive one really hurts.

We have soaker hoses all the way around our foundation and we usually water the soil around the foundation a couple of times a week in drought periods so the ground won't crack, shift and crack the foundation. I guess I'll turn on the soaker hoses today and start that process. I don't think I had to do that last year until July, but I am seeing cracks in the soil nearer the house than I like, so will start early this year.

I'm sorry to hear about the pecan trees. I've always thought of pecan trees as indestructible, but last year's drought proved me wrong. So far, most of ours seem fine, but most of them are near the mostly-empty creek and are used to a lot more available moisture than what they have now or what they had last year. It is starting to seem like it will be a really long summer.

George's pumpkins tolerate a whole lot of heat. I have them growing in the Three Sisters Garden along with Seminole pumpkin, Texas Honey June corn, and various odds and ends of different kinds of veggies that tolerate drought well. It is good yours are off to a great early start. Maybe that will help them have a huge and deep root system before the heat and drought worsen.

Sonya, The U. S. Drought Monitor map can be confusing when it is new to you. If looking at the statistics makes you crazy, just look at the colors on the map and the legend that tells you what each color stands for. The first map I linked was for the map released on Thursday of this week, which reflects data received through Tuesday morning of this week. The one for last week that I linked later on was released last Thursday. So, the map is always a little behind real-time, but not much.

It can help to read the statistics from right to left. Look at D4 and the number listed under it shows what % of the state was in D-4 (Exceptional Drought). Then, look in the D-3 column (Extreme Drought) and that shows you the percentage of the state in D-3 and D-4, and so on down the line. Mostly all I look at is the colors. White is good, and any other color is bad. Generally, the darker and deeper the color, the worse the drought is in that area. Once you're seeing red areas on the map, conditions are dismal. Once my area is in the red, I am only watering what I must water--like the soil around the foundation of the house, young fruit trees that would perish without water, etc. Usually I keep watering container grown plantings if they're still productive.

By the time my area is in the red, we are more concerned about a wildfire coming through and destroying everything than with watering enough to keep the garden alive.

Prior to 2005, wildfires were not a constant issue in most of the state, so we're all adjusting and adapting as it becomes more of a regular occurrence, along with more regular sustained drought periods. These maps and charts help us evaluate and understand what is happening across the state and how it relates to what is happening in our counties and in our own yards and gardens.

I've looked at the Drought Monitor for enough years that I know which parts of our property suffer and how much they suffer at each stage of drought. We have acreage and 90-95% of it gets by on rainfall alone, so knowing if we are in D-1 drought versus D-3 or D-4 kinda tells me what to expect. The first time that my area went into D-4 drought, which I believe was in 2003 after the relatively wet, good years of 2001-2002, I was horrified. I feared that everything would die. A lot of my perennials did die, but the trees and shrubs didn't. So, as bad as Exceptional Drought can be, most plants (not including veggies or annual flowers and herbs, of course) will survive it as long as the duration of the Exceptional Drought is not too long.

What is more worrisome than any specific drought stage is how much recovery occurs in between droughts. I am concerned that the developing/deeping drought of 2012 follows so closely on the heels of the drought of 2011. There was not enough recovery time in between, especially for much of eastern OK. Since eastern OK usually has huge amounts of rainfall, their plants may suffer more than plants in areas that have a lot less rainfall even in a good year.

Dawn