Jrslick, glad to hear that you and your garden are ok. We had some terrible winds and tornadoes even here in MD. Justaguy, this is a gardening forum, not philophy. If you want the answer to those deep questions then do some soul searching or go to church, but please don't mock our fellow posters for their beliefs. Adding a smiley face at the end doesn't make it a less divisive comment. I'm not bearing any ill will to you or anyone else, I just don't want to see this cascade into a fight. I've seen it plenty of times. Let's just keep comments like that private.

Suzie, You know me and the weather...I watch it like a hawk all the time. Glad the info is helpful. I try to post a heads-up if I am home near a computer. Some people, like Diane (Owiebrain) are in remote areas where the NOAA Weather Radio alert can't reach them consistently, if at all, so I am always especially watchful for storms moving towards those folks. I've been out in the garden, attempting to harvest sugar snaps and I say "attempting" because the wind has picked up in the last hour and is giving the peas and their trellis a thorough shaking. They are waving back and forth, dancing on the wind. It makes picking peas a bit challenging. Down here in southern OK it was a very cool morning, and then around 10 a.m. or so it was like someone flipped a switch. Our dew point has gone up 5 points in a couple of hours is now is at 68. That's bad, and if dewpoints hit the 70s, that's very, very bad. Y'all be careful up there. The NOAA weather radio is cautioning that the storms likely will be hitting OKC during afternoon rush hour, and that's just the worst possible time. I know many of you are well-experienced in dealing with weather like this and do think sometimes you intuitively 'feel' it coming once you've experienced that odd feeling in the air. If you watch The Weather Channel and have followed this year's usage of Dr. Forbe's TorCon Index, y'all should know he's giving NE OK an 8 on a scale of 1-10. That's just about the highest chance of tornadic development conditions he ever gives anyone. I think he gave one area a 9 week before last and they got hit pretty hard by storms. I have that uneasy feeling in my bones, but more for y'all up there than us down here. I think the KS-OK state line area may be in the bullseye, and Kansas and Missouri are in just as much danger as northeastern and eastern OK. Dawn

Seedmama, I was so worried about you and Paula and your families/homes/gardens last night after I emerged from the dark hidey hole to discover your area was so hard-hit. Seeing you post and hearing you say y'all are OK and so is Paula's family just took a huge weight of worry off my shoulders. We were all prepared to hop into the truck and head north today to help y'all salvage whatever you could if your house was destroyed....and you know that I am glad that's not necessary. Tim had the worst of the deal....driving home from Dallas (having left a little after 5 p.m.) while I breathlessly updated him...saying things like "There's a funnel cloud descending near Rennick Road..." or "The Ardmore tornado is moving towards Overbrook....." etc. He had that helpless feeling too, knowing our fellow Love Countians, friends, and neighbors were sometimes in the path of danger. Once he was close enough (about Sanger or so) to pick up radio transmissions on his county fire radio, he could listen and I didn't have to relay everything to him. It is really hard to hear an acquaintance of yours say something like "I have to move, this funnel is descending right above my head...." and, yet, where would we rural folks be without the storm spotters who put themselves in the line of fire to be able to relay accurate warning info? I cannot imagine what it felt like to have your mother out there on the road....and am just relieved she is OK. My dad was in that exact same quandary once in the 1970s. He and the guy he carpooled with just pulled off the road and laid down flat on the ground as a tornado crossed the road maybe 30 yards from them. We could see the storm from our house and knew there was a funnel cloud and knew they were on the road coming home from work, so we had a few anxious moments until he arrived home. I put up the plants around 2 or 3 p.m. after I realized that the forecast winds would blow them around even if no severe weather happened here. Honestly, for most of the day, I really felt like it would be a northern/central OK event and wouldn't impact southcentral OK, and then our dewpoint jumped very suddenly from 63 to 68 and our high temp hit 85 with a heat index of 90 and that's when I knew we were going to have trouble here. I had a hard time getting the chickens to go inside the coop but had all the dogs and cats inside the house or garage except the stubborn Yellow Cat who thinks he should be able to go anywhere and do anything with no human interference. Yellow Cat was scared though. For a while, I was running back and forth from the house to the cellar, trying to watch the Carter County tornadoes on the news that were headed towards Carol's family's part of the area. At one point, Yellow Cat thought it was too dangerous to wait for me to come back out of the house, so he went into the tornado shelter without me and was waiting for me when I returned. That was sort of funny. Sitting in the tornado shelter was scarier with the second band, because the funnel cloud was southwest of us in Texas in Montague County and moving northeast, so could have come close to us. The earlier ones were quite a bit north of us....from 5 to 15 miles away and headed east, so those weren't a threat unless they took a bizarre and abrupt turn. My least favorite moment in the shelter is when it suddenly gets deathly still and quiet and then suddenly ramps up again. That happened briefly last night and we think that's the point where the funnel cloud went over our end of the county up in the air and not on the ground. A few minutes later it was on the ground doing damage in Texas so all you can say is we got lucky. I had tried to post watches and warnings and had to give up when they started coming so fast and furious that I couldn't even keep up. Still, by the time I was headed for shelter I had no idea it was so bad in OKC because no news of that was reaching us down here. I was shocked when I caught some info and photos on the website of The Oklahoman and on KOCO's website. I think all we can say at this point is that while the death of 5 people is truly tragic and regrettable, we as a state were still incredibly fortunate that the death toll was not higher. Megan, I'm glad y'all are OK. It certainly came too close for comfort, didn't it? I lived in Texas the first 39 years of my life before moving here and saw maybe 3 or 4 tornadoes in all that time, and only one of them up close. Since moving here, I've seen more than that already, but we've never been hit by one on our property. I was worried about the pea plants too, but they held on to the trellis pretty well considering the high winds. We only had a half-inch of rain, but any rain is better than none. Dorothy, Glad y'all are well. I was worried storms might hit eastern OK late, but I guess they mostly ran out of steam before they made it that far. I bet some of us get more rain later in the week and we all sure do need it. Dawn

We are currently in Lexington VA and the snowstorm caught up with us ! We spent the weekend in the mountains an hour north/west of Asheville NC. It started with flurries as we left there yesterday afternoon. They followed us and we may not be able to get out of the motel parking lot at 9 AM to go see the baby ! I am glad all are OK. Have been out of touch so long . Will have to get caught up when I get some down time . c