I just know what rain we had here hasn't stopped large oak trees from looking dead, this place looks terrible and its going to take more to change it.

Charlie

I'm so jealous..........we had 2/10" about a week ago, and yesterday we got another 2/10". We are north of Oklahoma City - my inlaws in Moore/Norman got 1.7". We were happy to receive the little we did get - at least it was much cooler today.

Dawn, up north (sw Mo.) we got almost 7 inches of rain over a two-day period. Overnight, the yard greened up and so have pastures. Of course the much cooler temperatures are helping.

We were very dry and brown before. Some places got 10 inches. It was way too much rain at one time but we are very happy we got it.

Was it just not enough rain or were you just way drier for a longer period of time than us?

I like to go out in the garden in a light rain if the lightning isn't close. It had been very dry here. After 2.5 inches in the gauge and water everywhere, I pulled a weed and there was dry dirt under it. I ended up with nearly 5 inches over the two days and now everything looks greener. You didn't get enough.

Charlie,

Y'all need about a foot of rain to turn things around. It worked for us in April '09.....12.89" of rain in one day ended our drought and filled up every dry pond, swamp, creek, etc.

Farmgardener, Y'all sure did get cheated out of the rain! I agree cooler is nice but cooler and much wetter would be even better.

Glenda, In our part of Oklahoma, the soils do not hold water well in the intense heat of summer. It took me several years of living here to really understand that. During a bad drought several years ago, a soil scientist from the Noble Foundation (it specializes in agricultural research and is based about 30 miles north of us with one of their research facilities in our county) said that it only takes 3 weeks of heat/no or low rainfall here to put us back into drought conditions because our soils typically can hold only 3 weeks worth of water (and some of the poorer soils cannot hold that much). So for us, drought is a given every summer, and it all is just a matter of how severe it gets.

What I have noticed this week is that the areas that have clay have greened up more than those that have sand. The two grassfires this week were in sandy river bottom areas where the vegetation was too far gone....either alive but almost no green left or already dead or dormant. I guess the rain drained right through that sand and couldn't revive already dead or dormant plants.

On our clay, though, some soaked in but most must have run off. That's one of several disgusting things about red clay....it dries as hard as concrete and then when it rains, the water runs off instead of soaking in. That's why our cracks in the clay haven't healed much. It is so frustrating. Believe me, though, when I say I'm still grateful for the rain that fell even if you can't really tell it 'helped' much. Without that rain, things would be worse than they are.

Dawn

Dawn,
I wondered when I saw this subject line if you were having grass fires down there. We are out in the Oak Cliff volunteer fire department area, and this morning we heard lots of sirens, more than we've ever heard since we've lived here, and they went on at least a good 5 or 10 minutes. I went outside and there was no trace of smoke, either by sight or smell. Since there was no sign of smoke but so many sirens were sounding, we wondered if the entire Oak Cliff VFD was having some sort of disaster drill. Is that something VFD's typically do?

Tonight's forecast is calling for widespread rain again Wednesday/Thursday .... fingers crossed for everyone!

Suzie

Suzie,

We have the grass fires sporadically, but yes, we are having them. Some years they are horrific and we have huge numbers of them. This so far has not been that kind of year. All of that could change, but the recent rains give me hope that we'll have only a moderate year.'

However, most of the ones we've had have occured in only the last 2 to 4 weeks, so it is too soon to know if that is a long-term trend or a short blip caused by summer heat and low moisture. Sometimes, good rains in Sept. green up everything a lot and we don't see our fire season start in earnest until about Feb. or Mar. when everything is dormant and very dry. Sometimes our 'winter fall season' starts in late summer or early autumn like in did in 2005. Time will tell.

I do not know why your sirens went off. There are many reasons they might. Does your dept. use sirens to summon their firefighters or do the sound them to alert y'all to threats....or both? Our depts. don't use sirens here because people in general in the rural areas are too far from sirens to hear them. We use paging radios that set off a specific 'tone' for each dept. and the tone is followed by the voice of a dispatcher.

If your dept. were doing a disaster drill, I'd be surprised that they did not publicize it in advance so that the local citizens would not mistake a drill for 'the real thing' and become unduly alarmed. Around here, disaster drills are publicized in advance via the media.

Are you near a lake or river? My other thought is that perhaps your fire dept. had the kind of weekend we had and perhaps was being summoned by that siren to respond to a boating accident, boating fire, or to participate in a search and rescue/recovery operation on a local body of water. It is, after all, a holiday weekend and the last holiday of the traditional 'summer' season, so lots of people are out on lakes and rivers and sometimes horrible things happen.

I saw the tropical storm graphics on the news today and am thrilled Topical Storm Hermine is expected to send moisture across Texas and up into Oklahoma. We sure do need it and our plants will appreciate it, especially the unirrigated areas that survive only on rainfall. We really need a good rainy autumn all over this state.

Dawn

i have no idea how much rain we got in tahlequah since sept with a 50 percent chance tomorrow. but nothing looks different to me. i watered by hand today. i am watering the fruit trees now and have water in my little forest. no matter how much it waters there it seems dry, as if the leaves of the trees soak it all up. not sure. but today i got 6 japanese ferns at lowe's for 50 cents each and planted them in my forest in the hard grow and have the sprinkler on now in my little forest.

looking forward to tropical storm hermine, but i hope it doesn't do much damage for those on the coast.

Jessaka,

We were at the river this weekend and you cannot even tell it rained there...the water must run right through that river sand because all the areas, whether sunny or heavily forested, whether woodland or grassland, looked totally bone dry. It is like it didn't even rain.

We also had fires out west in our county....so the rain didn't help them much either.

I have been watching Hermine's projected track closely and don't think she'll bring any of us a huge amount of rain here in OK, unless she stalls over some area.

The Texas counties that are adjacent to Love County have a Flash Flood Watch for the duration of Hermine's trek across Texas. I was thinking to myself that flooding sounds nice (well, only in terms of watering the ground...I don't want anyone hurt or their property damaged). I hope Hermine makes it far enough east to help us and to help y'all.....we may be too far east to get much rain. I bet SW and western get some good rain though.

Dawn

Dawn,
The sirens we heard yesterday morning sounded like the sirens on the trucks when they're traveling to a fire, not like the warning sirens such as tornado sirens. There are no tornado warning sirens in this area of southwest Logan County. We are about 2 1/2 miles north of the northern edge of Edmond city limits, where the closest warning sirens are located. There are no lakes or rivers near by. We weren't aware of any disaster drills, but that doesn't rule one out that we just hadn't heard about. There was a large grass fire today several miles northeast of us, and the Oak Cliff station nearest to us as well as the others were all out fighting that one. It was about 20-25 acres. It has been so windy today!!!

Suzie

Suzie,

You need a police scanner! (Every single home has them here, I believe, and that's a good thing.) When locals hear sirens, they can turn on their scanners and listen to the verbal traffic and see if something is going on close to them that they want to know about.

I believe it was people listening to scanners that got us so many boats to the Red River Saturday so very quickly to search for the missing swimmer.

There was a bad fire at the western end of our county yesterday that required six fire depts. yesterday and they got control of it twice and then lost control of it before stopping it the third time, and that big fire in Woodward County wss much bigger and much worse....I heard it was about 300 acres and they lost at least 1 home.

I believe the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine will help many of us a lot, but it looks like they mostly will hit western and central OK, and it is eastern and northeastern OK that are most severely moisture-deprived and needing rain desperately.

I need to go start a weather thread.....all of us need to be ready for some rain and wind. I swear, if our gardens aren't burning up in heat and drought, then they are being washed out by flooding or blown away by high wind or pounded by hail. You have to be mighty tough and reslient to garden here.

Dawn

sorry to hear that the rain won't do us much good in cherokee co. at least it started raining today, but for how long?

Jessaka,

It could do you a lot of good if enough of it falls.

In April 2006, we received 9.25" in one day and that ended a drought that had lasted for most of 2005 and the first four months of 2006.

In April 2009, we received 12.89" in one day, and that ended a drought that had lasted through much of 2008 and the first four months of 2009.

It is just that 2 or 3 or 4" won't have as much impact as you think it will if you're really really dry. ANYTHING is a start though.

So, what we hope for your county is that y'all get 2 or 3" today/tonight and 2" or 3" the next day/night and then 2 or 3" the next day/night. That would help a lot more than 6 or 8" all in the same day because too much runs off before it can be absorbed.

Y'all keep an eye on today's storms. A tornado has been reported just a couple of counties southeast of us. Let's hope those tornadoes stay in Texas and that the rain comes on up here.

Dawn

Dawn,
I'd never thought about getting a police scanner .... great idea!!

Suzie