What do I win if I'm over 650???

You win our sympathy Scot. That is way too high.

No rain of over .8 in any single day since March! Somehow the trees still look good. It must be the 5 or 6 half inch rainfalls, or more likely just long taproots and deep soil!

Scott,

You win the prize for the least rainfall since March, I would imagine.

That is a scary KBDI. Is that at the farm or at your house or both? When ours is that high, we really pay attention to keeping the yard and the pastures cut short, and all brush cut back, etc. The higher the KDBI, the harder wildfires are to control and once it is as high as yours, even the organic matter in the soil and roots growing in the soil can burn during a wildfire. That is the really scary part. We have been paged out to areas where a wildfire already has been extinguished because people see smoke coming from the ground. When you tell the people that it is plant roots or organic matter in the soil that is burning, they simply don't believe you because it doesn't seem possible that such a thing can happen.

Is it correct for me to assume the pecan crop is endangered?

I think the trees will survive but that is assuming you get rain sometime again this year, preferably in the next couple of months. I realize you'd prefer to have some today, but that seems unlikely.

For what it is worth, none of our pecan trees on our property died last year and our KBDI went up to about 770. We have clay, but somewhere down beneath that clay there is deep sand. Friends of ours who live on bottom land with almost pure sugar sand have huge pecan trees like yours and theirs weathered the drought pretty well. All of us feel like what saved our trees was the autumn rains last year. Once rain started falling in late August, we went from about 11" of rain for the year to a little over 20-22" by the end of the year depending on one's location around the county.

Is your rainfall about the same as Cookson's or has the rain managed to hit the Mesonet station there and yet miss your place?

I'm going to link the year-to-date rainfall map. Maybe you'll feel better if you look at some of the pitiful rainfall totals in other areas.

If you need to remember happier times, we can talk about 2007 when water was standing and running everywhere. That seems like 100 years ago.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

I've been wondering about Scott's trees, too. I cannot imagine attempting - much less affording - irrigating them. You wrote last year that pecan trees love hot weather. You were right. I cannot say that for four others.

The pecan trees are in Okmulgee County and my Davis says 14.56 inches for the year there, which matches Dawn's link very closely. We got 2.91 in one day in March and that saturated the soil for us and helped get this far.

It has rained on 27 days this year, but only on one of those days have we had more than .83 inches. That is just amazing to me.

The trees really hate having moisture on the leaves and nuts and will get diseases quickly, but this is the second year in a row where the foliage is very dark and healthy - which leads to good crops the following year. Last year's weather caused a large crop this year which will have small nuts but they all still look OK. What started out looking like a potential of 50k-60k lbs is more like 40k for us now but still looks good. Half our trees are in bottom land with 10ft+ soils and half are upland with poorer soils. I have no idea what will happen other than to compare to losing about 20-30 trees last year that were in the worst soil.

I had a chance to get all the money back I have invested the last 6 years, but now I'll just be happy to get half a crop and have all the trees live. Moisture in late Aug through September is most important for nut quality, moisture in June/July is most important for nut size.

If we get to next week with no rain chance in the forecast I will use the one small well that I have (high salinity so only for emergencies) to make sure the handfull of best upland trees survive and keep the crop for a while longer.

On a positive note for everyone else, this pecan crop nationwide should be good for the alternate "off" year, and demand was down last year so I expect retail prices to drop back below $10/lb and native inshell wholesale prices to drop to $1.20-$1.30 instead of the $1.50-1.70 range of last year. Just a guess on my part though.

I drove up I-35 to Salina, KS, and then back 5 days later last week and the difference was pretty amazing. You could see big differences in the crops and trees after the rain they got during that time.

Further north and west it still looked bad, though. We saw rain every day last week on that trip.

One more thing, Accuweather.com's extended forecasts are pure garbage for Tulsa. I have watched the 15-day forecast daily for the last 2 weeks and it will have rain predicted in days 8-12 regularly and then the next day might have all sunshine through day 12, then the next day rain every day for day 8 to day 12, etc. I realize forecasts are not reliable that far out, but it looks like they just make up random forecasts. There is no way to go from one extreme to the other in temps and rain forecasts in 24 hours (and then back and forth a few more times) if the forecasts have any real validity.

Accuweather now says days 9-15 have lots of rain chances which to me means a pattern change is expected, but it never materializes and the networks meteorologists never mention it. In my opinion out Tulsa meteorologists are pretty good, and the weather models they use have come a long way (except for last week).

Scott,

Thanks for the explanation of how the timing of the rainfall affects the quality/size of the crop. I found that really interesting.

I think, oddly enough, that your trees will suffer more than mine in a dry year. Mine are used to dry years more often but yours are "spoiled" and are used to plentiful moisture since that's what they normally have. Mine cannot miss what they never have, but yours surely must miss the level of moisture they're used to receiving.

I'm in the part of OK that still is teetering just on the edge of drought, but not in drought yet, and adjacent areas of Texas between us and Dallas are in the same boat. Yet, there have been some very big, fast-moving grassfires and wildfires there in between rounds of rain. That was especially true in May and June when wheat fields were catching fire, often from the combines that were doing the harvesting. One week I'll think they look insanely dry when we drive through there, but then a couple of weeks later it will look a lot more green. It is such an odd year down here--seesawing back and forth from too dry to a little wet to too dry again. In February and March we were too wet, but that seems so long ago.

Scott, I don't put much faith in any forecast more than 48 hours in advance. The NWS seems to have more luck forecasting, for example, the conditions that come together for a severe weather outbreak than they have forecasting the high temperature 24 hours in advance. Last year and this year our high temp has consistently gone 3 to 5 degrees (or more) higher than forecast. Last year I decided maybe our thermometers (mounted 5' above ground in full shade all day) were wrong and kept buying more thermometers. We now have 6 and I can tell you that our thermometers all tend to agree with one another within 1 degree, but almost never agree with the Burneyville mesonet station or the forecast. If the NWS says "93", then Tim and I expect it will be at least 95 to 97, and it usually is.

I just look at the rain forecasts and shrug. Most of the time when there is a chance of rain, it doesn't fall here, and there's nothing we can do to change that. I try not to obsess over it because we sure cannot make it rain.

I expect that it is somewhat challenging to forecast the weather here in the middle of the country because of the way so many different contributing factors come together (or don't come together). Our local forecasters seem to have a pretty good handle on our weather, and often they will disagree with the NWS forecast and sometimes they even explain why the don't expect some part of the NWS forecast to pan out. I appreciate that they take the time to explain their reasoning. It cannot be easy, either, because they cover a lot of area on both sides of the river.

Remember the words of Mark Twain? He said "everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it". That's as true now as it was when he wrote it.

Dawn

What I look for in the extended forecast is a percent chance of 30% for any day. A lot of times our guys will throw up a 20% chance a few days out, but they don't put up a 30+ unless there is a pattern change that means more than just scattered stuff. A 30% chance for 5 or 6 days out means good things are likely. They never up it to 50% until within 4 days and a high confidence.

How fascinating! I must have read all this four times. I'm looking forward to next year's pecans, then. I only have a younger tree that will be producing next year. Interestingly, our very old pecan tree is the one near and over our house and I just absolutely love it there (we have above ground plumbing, btw). When the nuts are coming down I must be careful when I step outside the back door, lol. Haven't had any real pecans in a while, though. Now that I know it loves heat it must be the perfect shade tree as it will not defoliate in the extreme heat. How absolutely lovely.

It's good to know a little bit of water can go a long way for them. I have rainwater capture systems that I can help them with. I wasn't watering them because I assumed they would require enormous amounts. Never dawned on me every little bit helps. Now I know exactly when to do so!

bon

The forecast just got worse. All rain chances removed and highs upped to 103-105 for the next week.

I am letting 12 blueberry plants die because they were borderline in terms of health and ability to keep watered based on how they were planted. The others were planted better and look good thus far. The harvest will likely be way down for a few years.

Bon, We have native pecans and only 4 of them ever get anything other than rainfall. The big one in the front yard gets watered occasionally when I am watering the lawn, trees and shrubs, and I've watered that area twice in June and once in July. The three on the north side of the house sit about 30' from the house, and they only get water if I am watering the shrubs, vines and trees on that side of the house. I only water it about once a month on that side of the house, though the foundation/soil area get regular watering from a soaker hose.

We have native pecan trees in our woodland that never have received irrigation a single day in their lives and most of them are in the 20-50 year or older range. Trees tend to be very resilient in general, although last year's heat and drough surely was hard on many trees. On our property, it was a lot harder on the native oaks than the native pecans.

Scott, I just went and looked at my forecast and it has worsened, similar to yours. Of course, whatever they say, I just add 3 to 5 degrees. Case in point: our forecast high for today was 98, our current high temp at our house is 101 and likely to go another degree higher or maybe 2. For Saturday, the NWS says 103 for us....so I hate to think how hot it might get. There's no rain in our 7-day forecast.

Our bermuda grass had been holding its own fairly well and keeping at least a green tint to it, but it is rapidly browning out now. I refuse to water it. I watered it last year and it stayed brown, so why bother watering it now?

I have been thinking all along than we wouldn't have to worry about increased fire danger here until our KBDI was getting close to 600. My fire chief husband says 530 is the point where he thinks we'll start having trouble. I guess we'll see because rain isn't falling and the KBDI goes up daily.

Dawn

First time I am seeing large cracks in the our yard yesterday. I not seen such cracks last year even though it was very hot and dry, but we had some rain in May and June.

I wonder why there is gap in the drought forecast for Oklahoma? that means expecting some rain?

{{gwi:188533}}

Well, this is interesting. I don't not actually believe it is completely accurate. The source has been known to settle for bribes or falsify information under coercion. But who knows?

"131 years of global warming in 26 seconds"