Not as far as I know. It is sort of hit and miss in this state. I have about a dozen different ways I try to catch the latest fire news and post it here if I think any of our forum members have wildfire and/or evacuations near them. One way to see the location of very large fires is on one of the websites that show you the NOAA Satellite Fire Detection data. They analyze the satellite data and put a 'dot' on the map to show the location of each fire. My DH and I commonly refer to it as the dot map. Unfortunately, the fires have to be big before they show up on the dot map, so it won't have fires that have just broken out in the last half-hour or hour. I'll link the dot map below. It updates frequently, but because it is based on analyzed data, there's always a little bit of a time lag. If you are checking it often during the day, remember to hit refresh so it pulls up the latest data. You can check with your county's Emergency Management Director to see if he or she has any way that they routinely send out news alerts, including breaking news of fires or tornadoes or whatever. Ours sends out such alerts on Nixle.us and anyone can sign up to get them. Some counties that maintain a county website put fire news on their website---at least during business hours. Some fire departments do the same, and some fire departments and emergency management directors use Twitter or Facebook to alert their citizens of fires in the area. If there is a fire in your area and you are pretty sure it is in your county, sometimes you can go to radioreference.com and use it like a scanner to listen to your county's fire channel (if it is available for Web audio listening) on radioreference.com. There's also a smartphone app at that website. I used that website last week to track the fires in Cleveland County when our firefighters were up there helping fight them. Not all counties are available via radioreference, but many of them are. For large, ongoing multiday fires, you can go to the Oklahoma Forestry Services webpage and check the daily wildfire situation report at both the state level and the higher areas, like the southern area or the national inciweb system. Sometimes, on bad wildfire days, the NWS offices will put up radar with the current smoke plumes from large fires circled on them to show us where they are. Also, at the request of local county emergency officials, the NWS will issue a Fire Warning (different from a Red Flag Fire Warning) in the case of evacuations. When they do this, the alert feature on your weather radio sounds to alert you and is followed by an evacuation message. I also use the different local media websites. Most of the TV stations in central and northeastern OK get fire news up really quickly, usually with live streaming reports including video footage from a chopper. Often I click on KOCO or KFOR and first learn of a fire there, and then start hitting other websites to pick up the latest news. If we lived in Texas, they have a Google map feature on their Texas Forest Service website that shows working fires, their size and the amount of containment. It is really handy, but we don't have it here. I use it to track fires near me but across the river, since I am surrounded by Texas on three sides. Some counties have a reverse-9-1-1 system that calls homeowners and warns them of hazards, including dangerous weather and fire evacuations. So, as you can see, there's lots of way you may be able to find the news, but it is not necessarily easy. The dot map is linked below. It is the NOAA Satellite Fire Detection site and is available via OKFIRE via the OKMesonet. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: NOAA Satellite Fire Detection Site

Again, thanks to all for your good wishes. I had called the urologist's office on Wednesday b'c of some concerns and for information, so here's that update. ******* The good news is that I don't need a second surgery b'c the stone ( left ureter) that showed up on the CT scan was not there when he looked and I think I know WHEN I eliminated it. Sigh. The second bit of good news is that I've lost about 10# in the week since surgery. Now I know the true meaning of hydronephrotic kidneys, meaning swollen with fluid. Heck of a way to lose weight, though. The right ureter stone turned out to be a real complication. When he first saw it he thought it was a calcified tumor and ASAP went to the left ureter b'c apparently tumors are usually bilateral, but no tumor/stone there. He started to take tissue samples for biopsy but as he cut deeper there was the stone totally embedded in tissue. And that's why it took 2 hours instead of the 45 min expected. Are there still problems symptomatically? Yes, but they are expected due to the stents being in each ureter, and I'm quite uncomfortable most of the time, and I can't sit upright for long or stand. So it's the recliner chair or the bed. Today it was mostly in bed b/c I couldn't even stand the recliner chair for long despite the men's semis from the US Open, the last one between Murray and Nadal being cancelled due to rain. An appt is already set up to remove the stents if all goes well, but not for some time to allow for healing without scarring closing off the ureters. So in the meantime I curse a bit but of course will hang in there knowing that kidney function appears to be saved and also knowing I have no other option other than hanging in there. ( smile) Carolyn

Hooray, Pam, I'm glad that itchy and annoying bandage is off, at least. Keep working on range of motion, it'll be better a bit at a time. And after you get the cataract surgery, you'll be able to see it too! (grin) Actually my mother, my stepmother and my Dad all had cataract surgery and they all said it was really quick and easy, so hopefully it really is quick and easy! I'll have to check with Ashley's new MIL about those shoes, she works at the local orthotic footwear store, the place that makes special shoes and sells stuff like Birkenstocks and Uggs. They might even be available here in the sticks! I especially like their advertisement about how if you are old and fat and your knees ache, they'll fix you up with shoes, LOL. Helene, I'm glad you are feeling so well. My doc says the same thing, that I can maybe recover faster with PT, but rehab is normally 4 to 6 months and I'll be fine without it if I choose not to participate. As for the stairs, heck, I'm still going down one at a time, so you're probably doing very well. I'm amazed you're getting around so quickly, I can tell you that. I'm doing pretty well too, I think. I'm back to walking to work, and I went to the farm and cut a big maple that had fallen onto the fence line during our last storm. That entailed crawling onto/into/over the tree to cut the ends of the branches that were lying on the fence, and I managed to at least not hurt myself further, balanced with each foot on separate limbs while sawing branches with a hand saw. If I were a REAL farmer I'd have a chain saw.... And I have no problem at all sneezing or laughing, thank goodness, so it appears that my problems are at least dry! Annie

I believe in ghosts but I don't think that everything people claim is a ghost necessarily is. I do try to find a rational explanation first. When I had just graduated high school, we lived in and ran a country hotel in a town which owed its existence to a monastery. We felt we had a poltergeist which liked to hide things in weird places. My mother once found her hairbrush jammed behind the radiator bar (and behind the grille) of an electric heater. We referred to this poltergeist as "Jeb" for reasons too long to go into. Anyway, after graduation, I invited a schoolfriend from the city to come and stay for a week. She had just received an expensive watch as a graduation gift. We were heading down to the bathroom for a pre-dinner shower, and she wondered where she should safely leave her watch. I suggested she leave it on the middle of her bed, where there was nothing else and it would be easy to find. (OK, my bedside tables were a little cluttered :-D. ) We locked the door and left. When we returned, the watch was nowhere to be found. We felt the bed all over, to see if it had been displaced and we couldn't see it because of the pattern on the bedspread. We looked under the bed. We looked everywhere. My friend was very upset. Feeling like a weirdo, I stood in the middle of the room and said, "OK Jeb, this isn't funny. We're going down to dinner and if that watch isn't back when we get back, I am going to march down to the monastery and bring back a priest and have you exorcised." My friend looked at me like I had two heads. When we returned, there was the watch, right in the middle of the bed where we left it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ One of the country hotels in the town where I now live is reputed to have the ghost of the former owner. Little weirdnesses happened reasonably frequently, but little that couldn't be explained away if you were willing to twist things around a bit. But one day, I saw it. I was cleaning one of the bar areas. It was a narrow room connected on its long side by a large archway to a much larger dining room. The bar ran partly along the opposite long side. A doorway on the rear short side, which was always open, led to a hallway about 15' long, off which were the walk in refrigerators and a door to the outside at the end. You could not see the bar from the hallway as it was in line with the walk in refrigerators and so obscured from sight. I was sweeping the hallway floor working back towards the bar area when I saw who I thought was one of the other staff members come through the archway from the dining room and cross past the doorway out of sight towards the bar. I was expecting this staff member to come in and collect up the safety mats behind to bar and take them out to wash them down while I swept and mopped the now cleared bar floor, so I said, "Morning Kevin," as I continued towards the bar area, still looking towards the bar and finishing less than a minute later. To my surprise, there was no one else in the room at all and the floor mats were still in place. There was no way anyone could have left without being observed as the only entrances were the archway and the hallway. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've had other experiences I can't explain (including hearing the creepiest recording I've ever heard made by a friend who lived in a house that had a serious problem), and my mother had a couple of unexplainable experiences. Despite what some claim, I don't think we know everything about the universe yet so I do believe that there are some things we don't fully understand yet.