Dorothy, From watching how the jetstream, I think it has persistently come close enough to your end of Oklahoma that you get the gray, gloomy clouds on the edge of the cold fronts that are dropping snow and ice north of you. Way down here in southern OK we've had more sun than last year, but in the last week or so, the sun has become increasingly rare. Keith, You're welcome. I'm getting pretty concerned about y'all up there in central OK. This is the driest I remember seeing your part of the state in winter in several years. I understand exactly what you did and why. I'd probably do exactly the same thing if I was a dry as you are. When my soil gets so dry in drought periods that rainfall or sprinkler irrigation rolls downhill on the surface of the ground and isn't even absorbed, I know I've waited too late to start watering. I think it is always better, even (maybe especially) in winter to water the dry ground. If it gets too, too dry and planting time is approaching, it can be hard to keep the soil moist enough for seeds to sprout. The big mistake I made in one dry spring (may have been 2003 or 2005) is that I planted and watered sparingly waiting for rain to fall to give the seeds and plants more water. Well, rain never fell and by the time I realized that I should have been watering more heavily to get them off to a good start, the were pretty stunted and pathetic. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it made me a better gardener in succeeding dry years. Don't even mention those photos of those big old black clouds. They are fascinating but in a horrifying and very scarey type of way. I hope and pray we've learned enough about conservation and no-till commercial farming that we never put ourselves in that predicament again. Can you imagine the mass hysteria, especially on the part of the media with its 24-hour-news-cycle nowadays if we had something like that occurring? If you haven't read the book about the Dust Bowl days that I've linked below, I highly recommend it. I reread it once every 2 or 3 years to remind myself of how bad it was and what all those folks went through. We throw the word "diaster" and "catastophe" around pretty loosely nowadays, but those people who endured the Dust Bowl years really lived through a catastrophe and it lasted for years. Some of the old-timers here have told me stories about what it was like here in our county, and it wasn't pretty. One of them lived on land adjacent to ours and she tried to explain what it was like to have the big clouds of dust ruin the laundry you'd just washed, or blow through the cracks in walls, etc. into the house and cover everything with a fine layer of dust. She was a very small child then so I'm not sure how much she remembers directly and how much she remembers from hearing her folks talk about it later on their lives. I just can't imagine what it was like to endure 8 long years of catastrophe. My dad did tell me about the pure agony of watching crops fail over and over, which was a disaster for folks who essentially raised all their own food. So, if couldn't grow a crop, you couldn't eat. One thing that sticks in my memory from photos of those days is just how painfully thin everybody was. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: The Worst Hard Time

Probably in August I will pay someone to push them into piles, or cut them into pieces and use my tractor to grapple them into piles for winter burning. The ground will not be dry enough to support large equipment for many weeks. Thirty were uprooted and the rest snapped off 2 to 20 feet high. These are all old native trees that we recently had thinned around and just got ready to manage this year. That's the way it goes. I don't feel to bad about it because before I got down there to see it I had been under the impression that the damage was widespread. I guess it all depends on how it compares to expectations. I admit to having tears in my eyes when I first found out. I have invested so much time and money into that place. The wood is almost worthless. Pecan in this area has almost no value. This might be one of the highest density pecan tree areas in the country.

A few minutes ago TWC updated Dr. Forbes' TorCon Index, changing the '6' previously assigned to Western/Southern OK to Western/Central OK, so I wanted to note that change here. The TorCon Index updates throughout the day, so I've linked it below so anyone who is interested can check it as needed. I believe TWC's Great Tornado Hunt 2012 team plan are here in Oklahoma today again since this is where they're most likely to find the severe weather they're seeking. I don't know if those of you with plant damage from yesterday would be better off pruning off damaged foliage today or not. You might want to leave it on the plant to help protect still undamaged portions of your plants in case more severe weather hits your area today. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: TWC's TorCon Index

It was a strange storm for us, but did bring some rain. The Mesonet station says they got 1.09 and the county above me is reporting 3.41 inches. I went out a few weeks ago to find that my rain gauge was shattered, so I'm not sure exactly sure what we got, but I am sure it was more than an inch. I have two computer monitors so I had the right one on radar and had been watching that little storm for a while. It looked like if it was going to hit us it would just be the edge of the rainfall since it was moving NE. We had about 30 min left in our thunderstorm warning and the end of that storm turned exactly east so it would come right over us. We had been watching lightening and hearing thunder before that, and getting whipping wind, but no rain. Then a string of storms started building and they just looked like they were in a straight line with us and to our west. They extended our thunderstorm forecast and then the rain hit with gusto. Everything looks good today although I do have a couple of leaning tomato plants in containers that I didn't have stakes for. I picked a little more broccoli yesterday, and since we got rain and our temp is down to 75 today, I am going to try to leave the rest a couple of days and just keep an eye on it. A temp of 75 sounds wonderful, and feels great if you are in the shade, but with 89 percent humidity, your clothes get wet in a hurry if you are working. I came inside to rest and rehydrate, then I am going back out.