Bumping this down the page as the warning has expired.

George, I've been praying as well and I am grateful for your prayers on our region's behalf and also for the half-inch of rain that has fallen today, and still hoping and praying for more. Do you know what I am really praying for? A big, wicked thunderstorm with blinding lightning and crashing thunder, lots or wind whipping the trees back and forth, and rain pouring from the sky for hours. How often do we get that here lately? Not at all. In April 2006, though, we had a storm like that which dumped 9.25" of rain in one day, and 8" of that fell in four-hours. Because we'd been in a drought in 2005-2006, even the flash-flooding that occurred was only a "minor inconvenience", although I might have felt differently if our home had flooded, as a few did, or if my vehicle had floated off into a creek with me in it, as a few did. Instead, I stood on the porch and watched it rain endlessly. I even ran out into the storm to pour the water out of the rain gauge before it overflowed. The rain from that storm gave us several weeks of reprieve from the serious wildfire threat, and we wouldn't have to fight multiple, large grassfires until the week of July 4th. It is amazing what a difference that one storm made. That's the kind of storm I really hope to see again, but any rain is good. Did y'all get rain? Dawn

Sometime this evening they cancelled the Red Flag Fire Warning, so I'm bumping this down the page.

Carol, They base the warnings on a combination of wind speed, humidity and temperature. I am sure the dryness of the vegetation must factor into it somehow. Y'all are lucky to be getting rain as so much of the state is not. Today's biggest problem likely is the Relative Humidity. Our RH is very low. Our mesonet station is down, so I can't say for sure how low, but when I checked a few seconds ago, the Mesonet station nearest us was showing 14% and the nearest station on the Texas side of the river is showing 7%. Tim has been outside mowing and has been saying for hours he thinks our RH is in the single digits. To me it feels more like 12 to 14%. It wouldn't surprise me to have Red Flag Fire Warnings or Fire Weather Watches up for parts of the state every day for the next few days. The current conditions are very similar to, but perhaps drier than, the conditions in April 2009, in many parts of the state. The amount of recent rain that has fallen is not that relevant to fire danger until your dormant vegetation has been replaced with fresh, green vegetation. In an an area with a KBDI of 600 or higher, recent rain makes little difference as long as the KBDI is that high. In an area like ours with clay soil, heavy rain can make it harder to fight fires. If fires occur before significant greenup occurs, then the dead vegetation still burns and the firetrucks can't get out into the fields to fight it because they get stuck in the mud. Our KBDI is relatively low here, so the one fire we've had here today moved slowly in a field that was about half greened-up. Another couple of weeks and fires will be much less likely here in our county. Our relative greenness when I checked it yesterday was 58% so we have a lot more green than we had a couple of weeks ago. In past droughty springs, we've been to fires in fields that look totally green and quite lush. However, there was such a thick layer of thatch and dormant vegetation from previous years (esp. in pastures that are never mowed and never grazed) lying on the ground that it was burning underneath the green grass. I've been outside most of the day and my skin is so dry I don't even really know how to describe it. My hands feel like sandpaper and my skin hurts. Now that I'm inside, I'm going to slather on the hand lotion. Dawn