Yeah, its 90 on my back porch right now and it feels goof when 90 feels good, that's bad....

Well, rats! I got all excited when I saw that, until I realized you meant the overnight lows. And they sure don't stay down there, very long, do they? I went to let the dogs out at 2 in the morning and it was still nearly 90 on the porch.

I did notice that we are supposed to have a couple of lows of 78-79 this week in the Shawnee area. Maybe some of the tomato blossom will actually set.
I can always hope, right?

Pat

Scott, You are bad, bad, bad.

I've spend most of the last 4 days at fires, going to the store to buy food for the firefighters, cooking for the firefighters, baking for the firefighters, etc. etc. etc. and I was hoping you meant the 80s for a high when I saw the title of your post, even though I didn't really think you did.

We were out at an all-night-fire the other night and the temps were in the 90s until 2 or 3 a.m., and of course, at the fireground it was much hotter because of heat radiating from the fire.

If anyone remembers the summer of 1980.....I am starting to wonder if this one will be like it. I don't know how bad that one was here in OK, but in Fort Worth that year, we had 69 days over 100 and I think 42 or 43 of them were consecutive.

Water companies here are starting to impose water restrictions. Some are asking people to cut back voluntarily. One, which serves a lot of the people north of us in our county, abruptly announced "no outdoor watering" yesterday. I don't know that people will comply with that. When you have very dense clay soil that contracts and expands, you have to keep the soil around the foundation moist or risk having a repair bill of thousands of dollars if your foundation cracks.

So far our water company hasn't implemented watering restrictions, but it wouldn't surprise me if it comes to that. I know they're having some problems with a pump near us. We haven't had water restrictions since moving here in 1999, not even in 2003 when we only had a little over 18" of rain for the whole year, but I don't think 2003 was as hot as this year.

Soil moisture levels at the Mesonet stations are pitiful and Keetch Byrum Drought Index numbers are shockingly high for this time of year when we normally have good residual soil moisture from the spring's rainy season.

I need to go outside and pick purplehull peas and okra before it gets too hot, but the bunnies and deer are out there eating and I'm hoping they hurry up and finish. I don't want to go out and frighten them....or fight my way past them to get to the garden gate.

No relief in sight here either....with highs over 100 forecast for the next 7 days.

Our morning low on our Min-Max thermometer usually hits 80 or 81 and sometimes 79, but I've noticed that our Mesonet station at a lower elevation drops to 77 or 78 or even 76. Really though, those temps don't drop until shortly before sunrise and they don't stay their long either.

Dawn

I remember 1980 well because I was 14 and was left behind at home while my family and the neighbors all went on vacation at the same time and I had to stay home and keep all of the hogs alive for a week. There were about 100 hogs between the two "farms" and they were in scattered pens needing water and mud freshened 3 or 4 times each per day. Each farm took an hour to do and I went back and forth all day sun-up to sun-down. I can't believe they trusted me to do that.

We are getting ready to enter uncharted territory at our farm location. We have had no significant precipitation since about May 22 (not bad compared to a lot out west) and all our upland pecans will be at risk of death if we have a dry summer. If we can just get a couple of good rains between now and Labor Day we could end up with an excellent crop next year because pecans love dry weather and sun and they are as healthy as I have ever seen right now.

Do you have a well? Is any irrigation at all a possibility? I hate to think of y'all losing the upland trees. Will the bottomland trees be alright even if literally no rain falls? I don't mean will they produce a crop because I know the pecans may not fill out well if they don't have water, but will the bottomland trees themselves survive?

Our county is already an agricultural disaster area, but if I understand that correctly, it just means the ag producers can take out more loans so they can struggle to keep going for one more year. At some point, doesn't it seem hopeless to keep borrowing today and hoping for a better year "next year"? In this decade, those "next years" haven't necessarily panned out well.

For your part of the state, no significant rainfall since May 22nd is pretty serious.

You must have been a very mature and responsible 14-year-old to be left home to take care of the two hog farms and all those hogs.

The bottomland trees are loving the weather. The soil is very deep in most areas. The upland trees sometimes suffer by September in really dry years. It looks like late August out there right now. Our small well has really poor water and will hurt the soil over time, but would be OK in an emergengy.

At my house I only have 1 to 3 feet of topsoil and my 50 or so young pecan trees were starting to drop the leaves in a few spots this week. Eight hours and 6000 gallons of rural water later and they look as healthy as can be, although everything else is brown.

As long as we get a good rain in the next few weeks we will be OK.

We finally broke our weather and had an amazing day today. 100 degrees and it looks like tomorrow will be the same, with 72 for the low. So nice to see the chickens not panting and the squash not drooping. I was out working in the garden for several hours and didn't really even feel hot, which is very unusual for me, as I don't tolerate the heat well at all.
I hit all the plants except the tomatoes with bloom booster. Kind of thought about hitting the tomatoes with it as well, do you think it's worth it?

Today here in Adair Co it WAS only in the 80s today for a high. Almost 20 degrees cooler today than yesterday. Now if only the thunder that rumbled through last night had brought rain, real rain, more than the 1/10th inch that the gauge showed. But a cool day was heavenly anyway.

Tracy,

Since it is your monsoon season there, yes, I do think it is worth it!

Dawn