Apparently it turned into really scarey stuff in a few locations today. We have soaker hoses laid all around the house and turn them on once every couple of weeks to soak the foundation beds when it is dry and rain is not falling. I strive to keep the soil evenly moist and to never let it get dry enough to crack. The moist soil should protect not only your foundation but also your perennials and reseeding annuals because dry plant roots (in terms of the perennials) suffer freeze damage more easily. With reseeding annuals, mine tend to sprout based more on temperatures than moisture, although even if the temps are right, they will struggle to sprout and grow if there is a near-total lack of soil moisture at the seed's depth. Here at our house, the cool-season reseeders usually sprout in Dec. or Jan. (the malva sylvestris, larkspur, pink evening primroses and Texas bluebonnets already have sprouted), the poppies don't usually sprout until March, and warm-season flowers like zinnias tend to sprout in late March or in April, and the timing of their sprouting doesn't change much in wetter weather than in drier weather. I can't address frost heave because I don't experience that down here in zone 7B. Our ground rarely gets cold enough to freeze, so I don't think I've ever seen frost heave. The NWS seasonal outlook through April says some parts of OK will be drier than average, and the rest has an equal chance of being drier or wetter or average. What that means could vary from one location to another, but it isn't looking good overall. We are sort of at the mercy of the La Nina weather pattern through at least April. What happens after that partially depends on whether the current La Nina weakens slowly or more abruptly. I'll use my location as an example since I know all my own numbers. Our county's average rainfall for January (which is our driest month) is about 1.4". So far this year, the official precipitation total recorded for Marietta is 0.18" and the official precip total for our Mesonet station, located several miles west of Marietta in Burneyville is 0.50". Luckily, at our house, we've had just about the same 0.50" as Burneyville, but we still have a big deficit. So have many parts of Oklahoma. Unless a lot of precip falls before January ends, I think 2011 will rank high on the list of "driest Januaries" in Oklahoma. For the perennial beds, just supply moisture enough that they are moist but not sopping wet. That's all you can do. I don't think many of us will get heavy amounts of precipitation next week, but it is too soon to tell. The form the precipitation takes is so critical at this time of year. Three inches of rain would be heavenly, but 3" of snow likely would melt down to the equivalent of about 3/10s of an inch of rain, more or less. I'm hoping for rain and not snow, and since I'm so far south, there's probably a decent chance that's how my precip will come, if any falls here at all. The further north you are in Oklahoma, and esp. if northwest, the great the chance of snow. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful:

Randy, I know it's been there for at least a year. I think that when they reformatted (was that last year?), it suddenly appeared out of nowhere. There was a prior fire info page I used to look at, but it wasn't nearly as wonderful as this one is. I look at this page every single day (sometimes many times a day because it updates so often) and check our Keetch-Byram Drought Index numbers which, right now, are the highest I can remember seeing since we've been here. I had a harder time finding the KBDI back during the 2005-2006 drought and usually could only find a color-coded map that gave an approximate range. Every now and then a local weather forecaster or a NWS fire weather advisory statement would give us an approx. KBDI range for southcentral OK. On bad fire weather days, I tell our firefighters what the burning index and spread component are so they can have them in mind while fighting fires. The spread component, humidity and wind speed/direction are critical numbers we need when fighting a large grassfire. The ignition component and fuel moisture loads are helpful, too, and I use the dispersal conditions not just to estimate how heavy smoke will be, but to figure out if it is a good day to spray something or to run the sprinkler. Sometimes, this year, the spread component has been scarey-high, especially on days when the wind exceeds 30 m.p.h. At our monthly fire meetings, I tell the firefighters the current KBDI--and when it got to 630, we thought things were as bad as they could be Now that it is at 669, we all are really nervous about leaving our homes for more than a few minutes. It is very rare for anyone here to ever have a KBDI of 700 and I think it would take prolonged exceptional drought, or daily winds that were exceptionally high, to cause that to occur. Once the KDBI exceeds 600, even live plants, organic material in soil, underground roots, etc. will burn. When the town of Ringgold, Texas, burned in 15 minutes on Jan. 1, 2006, I believe their KBDI was only about 630 and the firefighters had no chance of stopping a wildfire driven by winds in excess of 50 m.p.h. One of the reasons that the prospect of grassfires and wildfires bothers me so much is that I know I'd lose organic material in the soil that I've been putting there for 10 years now. I'm not even worried about the house burning.....it is insured. My veggie garden and flower beds are not. : ) In 2005-2006 we had underground roots smoulder and smoke for days and days after a fire. People would see smoke literally rising from the ground and would call 9-1-1 to report a "fire". It was insane and kept the fire depts. running to certain areas repeatedly to check out the reports of smoke. There, I've told you more than you asked, but I just wanted to emphasize how much I love this page. Since our idiot county commissioners (and they know who they are) lifted the burn ban "temporarily" this week to let people burn accumulated trash, brush, pastures (awful decison!), etc., the fire depts. have been busy, esp. the ones in the western portion of the county. I've been spending a lot of time monitoring the OKFIRE page because of it. I also like the Burn Ban map.....just because it is a good barometer of how dry it is around the state. I hope our commissioners reinstate the burn ban next week. I have the sprinkler running outside right now because today's fire danger is so extreme. Enjoy the lovely weekend weather. I bet your plants are loving the heat in the greenhouse! Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Burn Ban map (updates constantly)

Lynn, I am just so relieved to hear that the damage was minimal. (Although, of course, it never seems quite so minimal when it is your own place, and not someone else's.) If I were there with you now, I'd just give you a big hug and say how happy I am that you are OK, so consider yourself hugged long distance. : ) I know it is a terrible experience, especially as you're hurrying home and watching that big old plume of smoke, all the while wondering what has already burnt and what remains in danger. I am so proud of all the firefighters in Oklahoma--volunteer and professional--and the work they do. In our county, the 14 volunteer fire departments, the BIA and the forest service fire crews work together so well that it is just amazing. I'd like to second what you said, Lynn, about people supporting the volunteer fire departments. Most people assume that there is some kind of magical pot of money that the VFDs get from their city, county, state, or the federal goverment.....and that there is always enough money. That, of course, is not at all true. Most volunteer departments barely scrape by even though they are constantly working hard to raise money. On extreme fire danger days and extremely critical fire danger days, I am like a cat on a hot tin roof. I keep the fire radio turned on to the County Repeater so I can keep track of every fire in the county, instead of leaving it on the "pager" feature. And, I hate to get too far from home. We live in an area of rural mostly native pasture land too, and it can burn like mad. We've never had a fire as close to us as yours, but have had 2 on our land (but they were burning away from the house and outbuildings, and nowhere near fences of animals or anything). However, the ranch across the road catches fire at least a couple of times a year. (Their pastures back up to a highway and most of the fires start from the roadside.) For any of you wondering how to know when the fire danger is high, one of the easiest ways is to look at the NWS Enhanced Weather webpages. I check them daily, as they are informative and give info on all weather, and not just fire danger. On the enhanced weather page, the fire outlook is usually in one of the boxes along the right side of the page, near the bottom. Just keep scrolling down until you see it. You can click on it to enlarge it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Enhanced Weather Webpage

Jay, Y'all have the same fire danger today too. I heard about your fire danger on our local National Weather Service radio broadcast from Ardmore, about 25 miles north of us. It seemed odd to me that they were mentioning fire danger from an area geographically so far from us, but I figured it was because they needed to fill "air time" since you can't say much about "sunny, clear, and perfect weather again today. Chance of severe weather: zero percent". For a long time, we were in no man's land here too. When we first moved here in 1999, there was NO internet service available, the local TV stations were very hard to pick up even with a large antenna, and cell phone service was pathetic. We pretty much had to walk down to the road (300' from the house) to use our cell phones. I felt like we'd moved to the land that time forgot. Eventually, all three improved but it has taken years. Our then 14-year-old son wouldn't have survived the move to rural Love County without the DirectPC and DirectTV satellites we used to get internet service and TV reception. When we lived in Fort Worth, I always felt our weather forecasts were pretty accurate. Then, we moved here and I was just bewildered by how far off the forecasters could be. I don't necessarily blame the forecasters for that....we are in a very, very low-lying microclimate that's hard to forecast. So, through careful observation, I have learned that frosts occur here at our low-lying elevation even when they are not occurring in Marietta. I learned that our low temps here by the river could routinely go 10 degrees lower than the forecast in Jan.-April although that's not true the rest of the year, and the low temps have gone as low as 18 degrees below the forecast. (It was a shock to have an overnight low forecast of 50 degrees, and to go out in the morning and have frozen, dead tomato plants and a hard freeze.) In spring, nowadays I look at the overnight low and instantly assume we could go 10 degrees colder at a minimum and cover plants accordingly. I'm still having trouble understanding the rainfall. Based on 30-year averages, we should get 38" of rain here a year. I did a lot of research before we moved here, and found "average rainfall" data ranging from 38 to 48". However, most years we are thrilled to get 34", and have had several years when the rainfall was between 18" and 23". I suspect that, if they recalculate the 30-year averages at the end of the first decade of the 2000s, our "average" rainfall will drop from 38" to about 34". I hate that the wind is beating up your plants. We had those hot, drying winds last May in combination with the drought but I think the winds ended here in June and didn't last all summer. However, almost no rain fell. And, stink bugs which have never been a big problem here before, arrived in May of last year and I fought them all year long. I did have stink bugs and leaf-footed bugs in 2007, late in the year (August, I think), but not in the quantities that arrived last year in May. I also didn't understand how much of a "drought pocket" we were in here. It doesn't matter where rain is on the radar, it tends to go either west of us or east of us. It is like the rain reaches the Love County border and "can't" cross over the county line. It has taken me years to understand the drought patterns. Finally, this year a Noble Foundation researcher said that no matter how much rain falls, it only takes us three weeks of "no rain" here to fall back into a drought pattern. That backed up what I had finally figured out on my own. Of course, this year has been a rainy year so far, and I am grateful for the rain. I know from experience here, though, that heavy spring rainfall is usually followed by almost zero summer rainfall, so I am dreading the summer months before they even arrive. I had a lot more trouble with wind in the early years here. Now I have a lot more small trees, shrubs and flowers (not close enough to shade my veggies) that help serve as a wind break. on the west side, but can't do much with the south side because the driveway is there. I do grow vines on the garden fence, and once they attain some height, they help break the wind some too. My tomato and pepper plants are deliriously happy this week. Actually, they weren't totally thrilled at first. The first couple of days they had a little wilting by about 1 p.m. because they'd had mostly cloudy skies and almost no sun for over two weeks. They've adjusted though. The tomato plants are blooming and setting fruit. The pepper plants have just begun blooming. My largest unripe tomato is about the size of a tennis ball and we've already harvested some ripe tomatoes from container plants that I transplanted into large pots in February. I should start having ripe fruit from plants in the ground any time now because we have quite a few green ones. Of course, in the same way that a watched pot never boils, a watched green tomato doesn't turn red, so I am trying to ignore them and not obsess over when they are going to ripen. After three hard days in the garden, I am slowly regaining some control and it is starting to look like my garden again. By the end of the week, I think I'll be pretty happy with it overall. The mosquitoes, though, are the size of small aircraft. Dawn