Right now it's -14°F with 10 mph wind. Gives a -33°F windchill (-38° windchill under the old method but we got sick of the wusses so revised it down a bit.) Wind Chill Advisory in effect until tomorrow here. Up north, it's colder so Dottie, Phyllis, Nodakgal and Marie (and of course others), bundle up! National Weather Service just instituted an "Extreme Cold Warning" option a week or two ago since a lot of new people to the area who aren't used to cold weather didn't seem to understand wind chill and cold temperatures so they started the Extreme Cold Warning (on an experimental basis) when it's below -35°F with winds less than 5 miles per hour. It's been placed into effect for the first time tonight up north. I see it's currently -35°F in some parts of nw MN. Winds are calm but looks like it could drop a few more degrees overnight. I feel sorry for the critters in this weather. Moonie, most houses are well-insulated here. Especially newer houses. Manufactured homes must be well insulated by law to be put in this area. They'll let the flimsier/cheaper ones go for the southern states but not here. It's 72° where I'm sitting in my living room. I'm wearing a t-shirt and light flannel pants. I'm very comfortable. I have natural gas heat. Tonight I did close my drapes, they're insulated and will help block some cold air from the windows but as long as the heat keeps going, I'm fine. During the day I like to let the sun shine in for the heat, when the sun is out, and well I like to see out too! No the heat doesn't run constantly. When it's well below zero, yes it runs often though. During the day when the sun is shining, the heat doesn't run much when the sun shines in the windows. I close off rooms I don't use and don't heat them much. The basement will be cooler but still not frigid. I'll still walk down the basement barefoot for whatever I need to do, which reminds me, I have some clothes in the washer that need to go into the dryer. To understand it better, think of it as it is, the reverse of hot weather! You run a/c in the hot weather. You close the doors. When it's over 100° it will run a lot more than when it's 80°. Your feet won't burn on the floors. I have my vehicle in the garage so that helps. It's an attached garage so it'll be a touch warmer than many detached. I seldom let my vehicles warm up too much, though in this kind of weather I'll usually run them a bit. Most experts feel it doesn't help much to run them without driving. Let them loosen up a couple minutes but then much is to move them to loosen everything up. You need to make sure you have good anti-freeze in there and your oil isn't too thick. Natural gas is very popular in this area, but oil and propane are also big. Certain areas use steam and few use electricity only. Electricity is expensive to heat with in this area, natural gas is about the cheapest. A GF who lives up north heats with wood primarily. She's in *much* better shape than I am! LOL Many people supplement with wood. Some will run an electric heater in a room to supplement a little. I used to but decided it was cheaper to just run the gas furnace and not mess with supplemental heating. I keep a blanket nearby when I nap to keep me warmer. These days I just keep the temperature up higher rather than worrying about being too-frugal. I still deserve to be comfortable. Yes it's cold outside but it's warm inside. Probably as warm as in your house. Probably one of the worst things about the cold climate is the heat will dry out the air. I haven't gotten around to adding humidity yet and the air is very dry. Having a bit more humidity would make things more comfortable and cut some need for heat too but, like I said, haven't done it yet. The other thing is appliances give off heat too. Lights, TVs, computers, and of course stoves and ovens give off heat that adds to the heat in a house. I hate to burst the bubble of those who think people in the northland live in igloos but it's very comfortable. BTW the furnace just shut off, and will likely be off for a while! :) The good thing about the cold weather? Helps keep some of the riff-raff out! :D I had to chuckle, I got an email from my cousin in Texas and she said the newscasters there have been going nuts warning people about the "cold" weather there and to be so careful with their vehicles... Really humorous! Who wants to come build a snowman???

Sorry to have worried everyone! We've had only rain and some wind...nothing significant... so I never thought to check in with everyone. There was a tornado (a rarity) viewed by friends last night at rush hour about 20 miles north of here, but I don't think it touched down. The kids and new baby are doing fine! Everyone settling in to their new roles, and baby Melanie is only waking up once per night, so MOm here feels quite human! I'll try to post pictures soon. Thanks for worrying about me!!!

Dulahey, I am so sorry to hear about all the damage, but you and your family are okay. Everything else can be fixes. Your garden and yard are so beautiful and I am confident you'll have everything back shipshape in no time at all. That's too bad about the onions. You still could yank them out of the ground (if the growing tips are damaged and I imagine they are), slice or chop and freeze them to use in cooking. That's the hard thing about growing both corn and onions here---if the growing tip is broken, the plants don't regrow and produce. If by chance your outer leaves are broken but the growing tips in the center are intact, the onions might recover. At least you didn't take a harder hit to the house---so, as bad as things look now, they could be worse. I hope the little Purple Martins were okay. Our PMs already have their second round of eggs in their nests, and the juvenile birds from the first hatch are flying and doing their share of eating the nine billion mosquitoes that the wet conditions have brought to us. (I'm just guestimating nine billion---I didn't go out and do a mosquito census.) You know, there's tons of things you could start from seed now and still get a great harvest: squash, watermelons, okra, and even the southern peas of your choice (blackeyes, pink eye purple hull, zipper, crowder, cream, or lady peas). Don't let this weather steal your gardening joy. Even flowers and herbs would be enjoyable compared to looking at empty beds and thinking about what the storms took from you. Earth Sister, I agree with everything you said. I'd be so tempted to take all that trash and return it to them as well, although Tim likely would stop me from doing it. I have said it many times and will say it over and over and over again: we won the Best Neighbors In The World lottery when we bought this land and moved here, having nothing but the best neighbors on all sides of us. I still cannot believe we got so lucky, and wish y'all had had the same luck we've had. It only takes one un-neighborly neighbor to ruin a neighborhood. Busy1, I am sorry for your neighbor troubles too. Maybe the rain will wash them away. George, How could you sleep through the storms? I got almost no sleep on Wed night/Thursday morning because our storms rolled in around 1 or 2 am and stayed loud and crazy forever. I got twice as much sleep last night so I feel like a new person this morning. kfrinkle, I assume you got what already had come through here. It was so loud and crazy with all that lightning and thunder, and it goes without saying that none of us down here in SC OK wanted or needed more rain. Our rainfall never matches our mesonet station's either as we're several miles from them. I try to keep a running total for our place in my head and we often run higher than our mesonet station all spring and sometimes in the summer, but by the end of the year they almost always catch up with us and we end up with about the same amount. It is good to see Texoma rising, but now we are at the point where they have to start wondering if the marinas and campgrounds are going to flood. It seems like it is always feast or famine around the lake. So, you don't have much planted yet? Are y'all too wet? I have the whole front garden planted, but don't know how the lower portion without the raised beds is going to fare. It depends on how much more rain we get and on how quickly it comes. The back garden? Completely untouched. There's perennial herbs and flowers back there, but it is a muddy, weed-filled mess. I doubt I'll get it planted this month, but I haven't lost hope yet. It is reserved for hot-season plantings, including southern peas, okra, watermelons, muskmelons, Armenian cucumbers, winter squash, some summer squash and cucumbers, so I'd hate to not get those things planted. I still have time to plant all of them and get a harvest but the hard part is going to be just getting it to a plantable condition. If I can't get the back garden whipped into shape, I'll have to wait and plant the hot season crops as succession plants in the front garden after all the cool-season crops are harvested. That's not ideal, but it might be the best I can do with the sort of weather we are having. At this point maybe we all should be planting water cress and rice. We had a lot of street flooding in town and cars washing off roads and into ditches and such last night, and I just want to say that it is hard to feel sympathy for ANYONE who drives around a barricade and deliberately drives into a flooded roadway. Barricades exist for a reason. At least one roadway in Love County is closed until further notice because the road washed out. Down in the Valley View and Sanger area where they had the tornadoes and other severe weather to our south, a train derailed off the railroad tracks. Someone sent me a photo of it, but I haven't seen the news so don't know if that train was blown off or washed off or what. In the photo I can see train cars piled on top of train cars but don't know if the piling was from the force of the derailment or if weather "helped" create that mess. Okay y'all, we can keep talking about the weather and its effects on our homes, yards and gardens on this thread all day, but y'all know I will go and start a Friday Check-In Thread later this afternoon. If you aren't watching the weather to our west/southwest, there's already a Tornado Watch active in west Texas for a whole bunch of counties in the area covered by the NWS-San Angelo and NWS-Lubbock. I haven't looked at the radar yet to see if the party has started, but once it starts, those storms could roll towards SW or W OK. What are we going to do if we can't spend the weekend out in our yards and gardens???? I'd rather be out there in the yard or garden doing chores---mowing, edging, pruning, weeding, anything.......and instead we'll likely be inside watching the radar and running to our storm shelter locations and hoping to escape further damage. Rainfall is good but too much at one time is not, and it seems like we are only getting the kind of rain that is accompanied by severe weather this spring. Whatever happened to a nice, slow, kind, gentle, easy-going spring rainfall? I hope the western OK lakes are able to refill the way the ones in central and eastern OK are. The Red River is looking bigger and crazier every day now. Dawn

Congratulations on your retirement!! My Mother In Law just turned 80 and retired this year after working the same job for almost 60 years. She was a micro biologist and molecular biologist at a hospital and had only worked that one job. Like other hospital employees she had to work whether it snowed, was a holiday or they needed extra staff on her days off. She loved her job but sadly they restructured at her hospital and the new management worked daily to try and push her out because of her age and the fact that she was one of the highest paid people in her position because of all of her years. She finally decided enough was enough and retired though she probably could have worked another few more years she is in excellent health and you would never know her age if she didn't tell you. I understand about needing the house cold. I have a neurological issue that makes it difficult to regulate my temperature. I keep my house at 68 during the day and 65 at night. If it isn't low enough I over heat and I can not cool down. I sleep in a tank top and shorts and my poor housemates wear sweatshirts and socks. I feel bad but it is so hard for me to cool down. I live in Florida now but when I lived in Mass I would leave the windows cracked at night in the winter time even when the nights were in the 20s and 30s it was perfect for me. Right now here in Florida our nights have been in the upper 60s and days are still in the 80s. I wish we would get some rain. My grass misses those summer storms we get and is looking a little dry even with running the sprinklers 2xs a week.