Dawn,
Yes we are in the center of it. Kinda odd that when we were having the real high winds and was really dry up until late March they hardly ever posted one for us they were elsewhere. Guess they don't have anywhere else to post one now. We are still green. Won't be much longer. And being short grass country and also a lot of farm ground the threat of fires isn't near as high right now as it was all winter. Also we don't have many trees to feed a fire here like many areas. A person always needs to be careful in the wind but the wind is also not as high as it was most of the winter. 10-20 mph most of the day. Hopefully rain will be coming soon. Accu Weather which is the most accurate for us and also a local private weather man both say a chance but widely scattered from Thursday night through Monday. The local man is the most accurate for us. We are truly in "No Man's Land" here. In OK most forecasters seem to think it stops at Beaver and in SW KS it stops at Garden City and Liberal. The NWS misses us so bad I don't pay much attention to them. Their forecast are for Dodge City and Amarillo,TX. Our local man says tomorrow will be a little cooler and then Thursday will be upper 70's to low 80's. And he didn't predict anymore fire danger than what is normal for here. Guess after you have lived here 43 years you just learn to live with it.
Managed to get a little done tonight. Finished the last frame and have plants in it. The wind did whip and burn the ends of the leaves some today. Nothing bad yet. If it gets higher sure I'll see some more damage. Hope the wind doesn't blow till August like it did last year.
After writing this guess I'd better knock on wood. Jay

Jay,

Y'all have the same fire danger today too.

I heard about your fire danger on our local National Weather Service radio broadcast from Ardmore, about 25 miles north of us. It seemed odd to me that they were mentioning fire danger from an area geographically so far from us, but I figured it was because they needed to fill "air time" since you can't say much about "sunny, clear, and perfect weather again today. Chance of severe weather: zero percent".

For a long time, we were in no man's land here too. When we first moved here in 1999, there was NO internet service available, the local TV stations were very hard to pick up even with a large antenna, and cell phone service was pathetic. We pretty much had to walk down to the road (300' from the house) to use our cell phones. I felt like we'd moved to the land that time forgot. Eventually, all three improved but it has taken years. Our then 14-year-old son wouldn't have survived the move to rural Love County without the DirectPC and DirectTV satellites we used to get internet service and TV reception.

When we lived in Fort Worth, I always felt our weather forecasts were pretty accurate. Then, we moved here and I was just bewildered by how far off the forecasters could be. I don't necessarily blame the forecasters for that....we are in a very, very low-lying microclimate that's hard to forecast.

So, through careful observation, I have learned that frosts occur here at our low-lying elevation even when they are not occurring in Marietta. I learned that our low temps here by the river could routinely go 10 degrees lower than the forecast in Jan.-April although that's not true the rest of the year, and the low temps have gone as low as 18 degrees below the forecast. (It was a shock to have an overnight low forecast of 50 degrees, and to go out in the morning and have frozen, dead tomato plants and a hard freeze.) In spring, nowadays I look at the overnight low and instantly assume we could go 10 degrees colder at a minimum and cover plants accordingly.

I'm still having trouble understanding the rainfall. Based on 30-year averages, we should get 38" of rain here a year. I did a lot of research before we moved here, and found "average rainfall" data ranging from 38 to 48". However, most years we are thrilled to get 34", and have had several years when the rainfall was between 18" and 23". I suspect that, if they recalculate the 30-year averages at the end of the first decade of the 2000s, our "average" rainfall will drop from 38" to about 34".

I hate that the wind is beating up your plants. We had those hot, drying winds last May in combination with the drought but I think the winds ended here in June and didn't last all summer. However, almost no rain fell. And, stink bugs which have never been a big problem here before, arrived in May of last year and I fought them all year long. I did have stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs in 2007, late in the year (August, I think), but not in the quantities that arrived last year in May.

I also didn't understand how much of a "drought pocket" we were in here. It doesn't matter where rain is on the radar, it tends to go either west of us or east of us. It is like the rain reaches the Love County border and "can't" cross over the county line. It has taken me years to understand the drought patterns. Finally, this year a Noble Foundation researcher said that no matter how much rain falls, it only takes us three weeks of "no rain" here to fall back into a drought pattern. That backed up what I had finally figured out on my own. Of course, this year has been a rainy year so far, and I am grateful for the rain. I know from experience here, though, that heavy spring rainfall is usually followed by almost zero summer rainfall, so I am dreading the summer months before they even arrive.

I had a lot more trouble with wind in the early years here. Now I have a lot more small trees, shrubs and flowers (not close enough to shade my veggies) that help serve as a wind break. on the west side, but can't do much with the south side because the driveway is there. I do grow vines on the garden fence, and once they attain some height, they help break the wind some too.

My tomato and pepper plants are deliriously happy this week. Actually, they weren't totally thrilled at first. The first couple of days they had a little wilting by about 1 p.m. because they'd had mostly cloudy skies and almost no sun for over two weeks. They've adjusted though.

The tomato plants are blooming and setting fruit. The pepper plants have just begun blooming. My largest unripe tomato is about the size of a tennis ball and we've already harvested some ripe tomatoes from container plants that I transplanted into large pots in February. I should start having ripe fruit from plants in the ground any time now because we have quite a few green ones. Of course, in the same way that a watched pot never boils, a watched green tomato doesn't turn red, so I am trying to ignore them and not obsess over when they are going to ripen.

After three hard days in the garden, I am slowly regaining some control and it is starting to look like my garden again. By the end of the week, I think I'll be pretty happy with it overall. The mosquitoes, though, are the size of small aircraft.

Dawn