We thought we would catch some of that south wind, and rode the bus to Norman, got on our bikes and rode back to the State Capitol. The real wind didn't pick up till we were back in OKC. I took this picture, when we got back to the SC.

Can you get them out of the sun for part of the day? Move the containers under a tree (or wherever), or build a temporary canopy to give them a bit of shade.

HW heat is not that expensive. There are little efficiency gains to a new electric hot water. An electric heating element is an electric heating element. The insulation might be a bit better but I'd expect a 10% or less improvement. The national average for electric HW is about $450 annually. So it is unlikely that your HW bill is really that high. Generally electricity is more expensive than oil for heating hot water but the amount of heat needed is not that high so the switchover doesn't help that much. There are no tax credits for oil because I think the point is to use less oil. There are tax credits for geothermal which would be an option for you but it would be a large capital outlay. Your oil bill is not that bad so you can't save that much. 85% is not bad and not worth replacing. Solar hot water with tax credits almost always pays for itself over a reasonable time period. I realize you don't want to outlay the cash but it isn't a bad idea. We paid about $6000 for a system - between state, federal, utility rebates/credits - the net was $2000. (it was a new house and so it saved about $800 for conventional so the net was really just $1200) You might need a larger system so it would be closer to $8000. And then being in NY, it might be more...

I was hoping there wouldn't be any big wildfires, but I knew it was a foolish hope, at best. When winds are in the 45-55 mph range, especially when in combination with low dewpoints, fires just happen. I haven't heard any news yet this morning, but those fires in NE OK, especially in and around Nowata County, seemed especially wicked from what I saw of them on the evening news. I know some structures, including at least one residence, were lost, but given that the wind was so strong, I thing those firefighters did an incredible job of saving as many structures as they did. I hope the livestock all were able to find green wet areas in which they could stand to escape the flames. The last report I saw said at least seven small towns were briefly evacuated as the wildfires approached them, but I don't believe the evacuations were long-lived. We didn't have winds quite strong enough to shred plants here, or at least not at our house, which is fairly well-sheltered from a lot of the wind due to being in a creek hollow. I also wasn't as worried about fires here because the 12"+ of rain that has fallen in the last few weeks has greened us up a lot, and we haven't even had a freeze yet. The NWS did come back at mid-morning and put us under a Red Flag down here, but we didn't even have a single fire in our county, as far as I know. Our worst wind gusts were only about 30-33 mph so it wasn't bad at all. I remember the Christmas Eve blizzard and I loved it. It was my first white Christmas ever, and I waited decades for it. It was pretty but I was over it in about 2 minutes. Let's face it....snow just leads to mud and muck and messes, so it is most appreciated when we are inside looking out at it, and then less appreciated when we're out stomping around in it trying to break up the ice in the animals' water pans or whatever. I like to look at snow, but I don't necessarily like being outdoors in it for very long. I'm a warm-weather person and every year it seems like the cold and gray gloominess of winter just drags on for far too long, while I am dreaming of spring and making planting plans. While it does seem kinda odd to be discussing fires and blizzards at the same time, and especially while some of us still have green gardens that haven't frozen yet and are still producing, I'm always mindful of the fact that our worst wildfires tend to occur during our winter wildfire season after everything is dry and dormant, and then also in mid-Spring when we get those wicked north winds before much of the countryside has greened up yet. The garden catalogs are starting to arrive, so it is beginning to feel like winter. We got down to 39 at our house last night and tonight will be about the same, but no frost and no freezing, so the garden lives on.