Just returned from southern California myself and I'm very glad to have missed the worst of it. The Malibu fire had just started early Sunday morning but when we drove up to Venice midmorning the smoke was already hanging in this heavy layer over south LA county. Drove back through the passes from Palm Springs late Saturday only to learn that they are on fire as well and the road we traveled is currently closed! I am very relieved my sister lives right on the coast but not near any major canyons, so hopefully she is safe. Although, she is pretty well ringed by fires, being midway between Malibu and San Diego and with fires burning in the canyons to the east. When we spoke yesterday, she said ash was everywhere, the sun was obscured by a thick haze and you could write your name in the film of ash on her computer screen! Laguna Beach did suffer from a pretty devasting brush fire in the early 90's and they have gone to great lengths to reduce their fire hazards but this current situation sure illustrates how easily these things can spring up and race with abandon, consuming everything in their path. I feel very bad for those in more vulnerable situations and I hope things improve there rapidly but conditions are not on their side :-(( As to SoCalifornians moving north because of this, I wouldn't look to a huge exodus. They readily put up with smog and poor air quality, abyssmal traffic conditions, the possibility of landslides and continual earthquakes of varying degrees of severity, not to mention annual brushfires prompted by the heat and Santa Ana's. In exchange they enjoy an incredibly temperate and balmy climate and those killer beaches. Few seem to be ready to give that up in favor of damp, gray NW winters that last forever :-) And there is that California lifestyle that just is not duplicated here........thank goodness!

James, It does seem like every single time you get rain there, you get torrents of rain. You can go ahead and complain here if you want to, because you know that we all understand. Wait until fall? If I did that, we'd have our first fall freeze in September, which actually did happen our first year here. I was not happy. It rained again yesterday and we lost the internet again until around 9 a.m. this morning. I'm not complaining---there was no, zero, zilch internet access when we moved here in 1999 so even though our internet goes out every time one raindrop falls, at least we have the internet now. We ended up with 1.75", which is significantly more than our Mesonet station recorded, but it is further west and I've noticed that about the western third of our county gets a lot less rain then the rest of the county. Michelle, I originally started posting severe weather threads here several years ago after Owiebrain said that mountains blocked her family from receiving NOAA weather radio alerts. I've kept it up because I know many of us are outside a lot and may not be paying attention to the weather, and often when we come inside, we come to this forum to see what's happening in everyone's gardens. I'm glad that your wather is proving to be drier than forecast. Amen to your comment on the rain in SW OK. It's about time! They do need a lot more though.....and some of you easterners need a lot less than you're getting too! I need to go look at today's forecast. Whenever our garden is having a 'perfect day' and looks really good, it almost guarantees we'll have high winds and hail come through and make a mess of it. I thought the garden looked really happy and healthy this morning, so we must be about to have some wicked weather. Dawn

I went out and ran errands most of the day after I did the harvesting early this morning, and then came home and canned. While canning, I logged on and looked at the QPF and saw the rain had shifted north, Scott, and I was happy for you. It was unlikely it would expand and catch both of us, so if it wasn't going to hit us here, then at least it seems likely to hit y'all there. Enjoy every drop that falls. Y'all don't have to worry about me. We'll be fine. We've had worse years than this one. For as dry as it has been overall, at least the majority of this year's rainfall here has fallen in June and July. That's actually better than if it had mostly fallen back in February and March and then very little since then. I just get tired of having to irrigate all the time when folks 100 miles north are flooding. It makes me want to stomp my foot like a 4-year-old and proclaim "It's not fair!" I also can think of more fun ways to spend money than sending it to the water company. (grin) I thought the grass in the yard looked a little greener this morning after I had watered it on Sunday, and then Tim mowed while I was canning pickles, and now the lawn is brown again. We did get rain here yesterday and a little this morning. It added up to 0.15". We'll try to make that bountiful amount of rain last as long as possible before we feel compelled to water the garden again. : ) Looking on the bright side of things, when only 0.15" of rain falls, you don't have to deal with muddy feet and muddy paws because there is no mud. Helen, Well, it all depends. Are they big drops or small drops? Kim, It is about time y'all have a good rainy summer. You haven't had one up there in so long. It probably is just as well that we aren't going to get heavy rainfall. I'm harvesting watermelons about every other day and if it rains too much once they are maturing, it can ruin their flavor. So, I suppose this week it is good not to have too much rain for the sake of the melon flavor. August melons usually have the most superb flavor because they ripen in the heat on low rainfall, so in that sense, we are right on schedule. As long as the cool weather lasts, we'll enjoy that whether we get a little rain, a lot of rain, or no rain at all. At least with the significantly cooler weather and lots of clouds, the soil moisture we have isn't evaporating as quickly as it was on the really hot days last week and over the weekend. Since it isn't likely to be raining much here tomorrow, I'd like to spend the whole day doing garden maintenance. It isn't every year you get a day in July so cool that you can happily spend the whole day weeding, deadheading, mulching, etc. I'm looking forward to that. Kim, I have a Mantis cultivator. It is the perfect size for me and I can do just about anything with it. I am amazed at how well it works on dense, compacted clay---as long as that clay has some moisture in it. The Mantis is no match for clay that is dry and has baked as hard as concrete, but it is great in clay with a little moisture. In the small areas of sandy soil that we have, it is awesome, and it works fine in the well-amended clay that we've been improving for 16 years now---cuts right through that amended clay like a knife cuts through butter. I don't know how it would handle caliche clay/rocks because I've never tried it on that. Sometimes my Mantis and I together can break up fairly hard clay better than Tim can do it with the big, heavy, rear-tine tiller, which is something I didn't expect. It seems like the Mantis digs in and bites into the soil with its smaller width while the bigger tiller is bouncing around on top of the clay and throwing Tim around with it. I love my Mantis and if it ever dies or breaks down to the point that it is beyond repair (in 5 years we've had no trouble at all with it), I'd buy another one in a heartbeat. Dawn

Hi Glen, I accept that you have chosen to live in an extremely beautiful part of the world, but surely you knew it was a cyclone risk when you planted your garden ? At the risk of alienating the rest of the board, I'm going to make a couple of predictions: - the rainforest will be back (barring any further storm damage) within 3-4 years. Whether its 'the same' as old timers remember it, I cant say. - there will be more cyclones - more frequent and potentially more deadly - along the Qld coast over the next 50 years as global warming intensifies - people will continue to appear completely unprepared for nature's fury - no insurance, no stockpile of food and water, no disaster plan - for as long the community accepts that this is somehow 'natural' and acceptable. I say all this with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, from the comfort of my lounge in Rocky, but this wasnt the Asian Tsunami. The citizens of Innisfail had at least 24 hours warning that a Cat 4 cyclone (later Cat 5) was bearing down on their town (from memory, they knew it was in the Coral Sea at least a week prior). The media maintains that many had become complacent because previous predictions had resulted in little more than strong wind and heavy rain, and that looked like being repeated in the eerily quite hours leading up to Larry's arrival. The latest from Innisfail is that the Mayor has a new problem on his hands - the huge influx of donated goods/food/water has meant that businesses in the town arent able to get back on their feet. I accept that losing one's home must be completely devastating, but many of the people interviewed by the media were, IMO, welfare cases long before the cyclone. As for reports of fruit pickers taking the $1000 'grant' and leaving town, hopefully karma will catch up with them. The Queensland spirit *did* make the news, but it seems that (now homeless) people who consider others 'worse off than me' dont make as much impact as those who cry out for food and water 24 hours after the storm. When you've waded through child beggars in different parts of Asia, seeing people queue outside a Coles supermarket doesnt quite have the same impact. My own 'mean-spirited' nature hasnt stopped me from participating in fund-raising efforts for the victims of cyclone Larry, but there is a vested interest inherent in that choice. Whether I personally agree with the wisdom of rebuilding a town on a bullseye or not, the people of Innisfail (and the other towns mentioned earlier) intend rebuilding their town, and that costs money. In good years, bananas and sugar return money into the Qld economy, and some of that money makes its way into my pocket. I'm also one of the mugs who gave money to help rebuild Darwin after Tracey, but I havent seen anything in the media about contributions from other states. Finally, and I'm sure this has flashed through all our minds, if it's going to take several hundred million dollars to get a...