Suzie, You never know, she might get a thundersnow storm. We've had a lot of them in recent years. I grew up in Texas just about 80 or 85 miles south of where we now live in Oklahoma, but I'd never even heard of thundersnow until we moved here. I won't say we have thundersnow here at our house every year that snow falls, but probably about every other year. We had it last year, and we've already had it this year. Jim Cantore was very entertaining the other night. I'm sure a lot of that is part of the "show" he puts on for the camera, but I also think he was shocked to see thundersnow that far north. The other weather phenomenon we have here that I don't remember having in Texas is derecho winds. The first one we experienced here came during the night with 60 mph winds and hit the house so suddenly and so hard while we were sleeping that we thought a semi-truck or an airplane had hit the house. I also had about 20 flats of plants on the screened-in porch (so it must have been April) and we had to run out and bring them all into the house because the temperature plunged probably 30 degrees in 10 minutes when the derecho wind hit the house. I think we've experienced 3 or 4 severe derecho wind storms at our house since then. The one I remember best, the local met on the TV news at noon told us it was coming and told us if we went outside 5 or 10 minutes before it was due to hit our area, we'd hear it coming like a "mighty rush of wind". Of course, Tim and I went outside 10 minutes before it was s supposed to hit and went down to the road so we'd have a clear view of it coming by looking up the roadway (too many trees around our house). Sure enough, a few minutes later it came roaring towards us like a freight train (we could hear it for a minute or more before we could see the blowing of the vegetation begin) and we went from clear skies to dark grey ones in about a minute as the wind blew through and the temperatures plunged. The other one I remember was a severe derecho squall line with multiple bow echoes accompanied by tons of lightning. This time, the TV met kept cutting into regular programming to warn that anyone working outside needed to get inside by a certain time. Our barn-style detached garage was being built then, and the buys working on it were welding steel beams together. I talked with them about the weather and convinced them to heed the warnings, get down off the structure, put up all their tools and head home. They literally were driving down the driveway when the derecho hit here and the first raindrops started falling, and we sure did have lightning! I was glad they weren't up on that metal framing when it hit. You've got to admit, Oklahoma's weather is never, ever dull. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Facts About Derecho Windstorms

Got to meet Scott last evening. Got 30 pounds of great pecans. I've been snacking on them ever since. I stopped by my sister's and she had to sample them. She said they tasted way better than the ones she had bought recently. Shared some with my coworkers today. Will be taking some to a few of them after I bag them up. It is hard to find fresh, great tasting pecans in this area.

Dorothy, You're welcome. I'm always happy to spread the word about Eliot Coleman's books and, also, about his wife's books. And that reminds me, Barbara Damrosch's wonderful book, "The Garden Primer", was updated and re-released in 2008 and I need to get a copy of it. It has been many years since I originally read her books but I remember that I enjoyed The Garden Primer and her Theme Gardens book immensely. Wait until you see his greenhouses (giant hoophouses really) on movable skids. They are amazing. It sounds like the cold finally reached y'all. I'd try harder to do some winter gardening, but I don't like cold weather. I finally lost the rest of my castor bean plants this week when the temperatures dropped into the low 20s. They had been killed back bit by bit with each successive frost. Having attained heights ranging from 8 to about 12 or 14' in height, they were gorgeous. They froze from the top down, but I left the ugly frozen leaves on them (although some eventually dropped on their own) because those leaves protected the still healthy leaves beneath them. I noticed Friday, though, that every one of them is now totally frozen out. In the garden, though, I still have lemon balm, sage, mint, rosemary, oregano, sweet alyssum, a few Laura Bush petunias in both pink and purple, and dianthus. Everything else is done. Every meal I've prepared this week has incorporated several items raised in the garden...that's how I keep my garden "alive" all winter long....by eating from it. I suppose we need the winter down time to rest and recover from a long garden season. Even as I lament the freezing weather and the end of the garden, I'm also looking at the 2010 calendar and starting to plot out my planting dates. LOL I do still have several pepper plants in pots that are producing peppers. I drag them into the garage at night (aling with the brugs) and back out during the day. It isn't exactly like we need more peppers....as y'all know, we harvested about 4 times our usual amount this summer. I think I keep the peppers alive as long as possible just so something is still green and producing....because I really miss the 'green' in the winter when most the landscape is brown or tawny gold. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: The Garden Primer, Second Edition

What is your take on the track and snow amounts on the storm tomorrow? Every forecaster is different. I've seen or heard everything from 1-3 inches for us to 9-13 inches. One forecaster said the two main computer models are almost 200 miles off on the predicted track. Sorry, we were doing kid stuff yesterday afternoon & I was off-line. I was surprised to hear the 1-3" forecasts yesterday, as the low hit the coast way down over SoCal and no evidence of a northerly track, and you see it today over SoNM and making TX unhappy. The old guys who taught me were always skeptical of model runs and relied on patterns and their memories - our forecast meetings always had a question for the experienced forecasters: 'what was your first guess' and much more often than not the first 'guess' was the one that verified. That said, the next bad boy out there off the coast has somewhat less energy as the one last week, not quite as deep or moist but could have winds that rival last weeks' if it doesn't fill while over water. Folks with animals need to start watching the forecasts closely as they'll start to be vulnerable if these next ~two weeks' worth of storms start to swing up north of Albuquerque and take the spring storm tracks, which should come earlier this year. The Aleutian low looks like it wants to set up too far offshore, and that means the surface lows that come ashore come south and swing up thru NM. So far they've been way south, but as time goes on they move N. If you are running short of hay and were going to go in a couple weeks, you may want to think about going sooner rather than later if you have room. That's how it looks like it is shaping up today. Dan