Thanks for the link and info, Dawn. I'm not sure if OKC is in the "white" or "yellow" area, but close enough I guess it doesn't really matter. I'll be interested to see next week's map after the rain Tuesday and Wednesday as you mentioned in the other post. I think we are already a little better off than we were last year, going into June.

Susan

Susan, You're welcome. I hope we'll see continued improvement next week on the map, and clearly some parts of Oklahoma remain far too dry.

I know we've had considerably more rain in my county now than we had through the same time last year...probably about 6 or 7" more. It's been spaced out a little more too, with some rain in each month, whereas last year, more than half the rain we received from Jan-Aug fell in the month of May.

Much of eastern and northeastern OK is still way below their average rainfall, and once you're that far behind, it is hard to catch up.

I'm going to link the year-to-date rainfall map, which should make it pretty easy for us to see where rain's falling, and where it isn't.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

Thanks Dawn.
I haven't been on here much and haven't been looking at this map weekly, but I see Harper county is now in the D2 severe drought condition. The Keetch Byram scale is showing us at 436, I think it was worse last time I checked. We received over an inch of rain one day during the week, that probably helped.

I'm wondering on the Keetch Byram scale how dry did you land get last year? any idea if anyone around my area maxed out? I'm just thinking of how my (and I later learned everybody else's too) tomato plant leaves started curling up then just died. I noticed getting some curl on the ones I haven't watered as much today so I watered them a lot. I'm thinking last years problem was partly due to our water rationing, we were only allowed to on odd or even days and I'm thinking the ground around the tomato plants must have just sucked all of that water up faster than the tomato plants could.

Sherri, I wasn't keeping an eye on Harper County last summer, or really on anyone else because I was at fires, often multiple fires, daily, or sometimes all night long. Last July and August are just one big blur in my mind.

Without knowing how dry y'all got specifically, I'd bet you were in the upper 700s there, and very close to 800.

Both the Altus area and the Durant area were the two areas I noted that were the driest on the KBDI, and they both actually exceeded 800 (which I thought was impossible) by 10 or 12 points. The driest our county got was about 770 or 780, and we had been in D4 well before we hit that point. How dry is that compared to previous droughts? The worst previous drought we'd had in our county since I learned about the KBDI was in 2005-2006, and my county topped out around 680 in that one. We never dreamed, never, ever in our wildest imaginings, we'd ever get 100 points drier than that in some future year.

On our worst, hottest day, we were at a fire just on the edge of I-35 in 115 degree weather. Firefighters were dropping like flies and I was really concerned about them. A big storm was moving our way. We could tell it was going to rain. We cleared from that fire just as the storm rolled over our part of the area. We had lots of wind and lightning, and enough rain to drop our KBDI maybe 50 to 70 points the next day. That was the beginning of a downward trend in the KBDI for us. But what "gift" did the thunderstorm bring us? Lightning started fires across the river in Texas and we were called for assistance with those wildfires. lol Sometimes the thunderstorms are more harmful than helpful at times like that.

I'll link today's map, and we can see what a change a couple of rainy days can make. I know that in my county we were getting close to 500 and now we're down around 100 after the rain last week and this week. That is such a relief, but we're still having grass fires. They're just slow-moving ones now and there's not many of them the last few days.

In my own yard, it becomes hard to keep plants happy after we hit 500. By then our clay is hard like concrete and water just ponds on top of the ground and rolls downhill instead of soaking into the ground. It depends on the time of year, though. A KBDI of 500 in August bothers me more than a KBDI of 600 in December.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Today's KBDI Map--Lots of Improvement