I just picked up my granddaughter from church in Newcastle. My daughter called and said to get home immediately! We did and now that storm has weakened, thankfully!

new tornado in Newcastle, i hope you are safe NowYouSedum. I'm watching my rain gauge fill up like it's under a faucet. Dawn, I might finally have an overflowing rain gauge tonight.

Looks like I moved, to new lake and river intersection here:

Moni has lake front property!

Hey Moni, saw your post on Facebook US NWS Norman site... Looks like you guys are having fun up your way...

Lisa, Indeed, this seems like it might be your day.

I cannot believe how fast everything went crazy when the weather reached central OK.

I hope Scott is okay. There is a tornado warning right now over in his neck of the woods, though I am not sure how close it is to either his house or to the farm. Scott, if you see this, I hope you and your family are safe.

Moni---you won't have to go to the lake for the Memorial Day weekend because the lake came to you. I hope there isn't too much water standing in your garden area in the back yard.

So far all the dire predictions of heavy rain and flooding have missed us (and I am not complaining). Even without heavy rain here in our immediate area, the Red River is so close to the I-35 bridge now that I don't even want to go across that bridge any more. It was scary this morning and is even higher now. Lake Texoma is less than 1' away from overflowing the emergency spillway. I had a big red-eared slider turtle swimming in the 'puddle' in our driveway around 5 pm. It is a really big puddle.

Stay safe! A lot of us have a Tornado Watch until either 2 or 4 a.m. depending on where we are, and all kinds of flood watches, warnings, advisories, etc.

I hope MIchelle is all right over there in Wichita County, TX, as they already have done one round of evacuations along the Wichita River and are advising there may be another round.

Before the rain and tornadoes hit OKC, western OK had been slammed by excessive rainfall and Elk City was badly flooded.

I know there are dozen of high water rescue calls in progress in OKC. This is just insane---it seems like it is something every single weekend.

Oh, and let's hope Canton Lake is finally getting some more runoff to help it refill. Their recovery has been lagging behind that of many other lakes here in OK.

Dawn

looks like we dodged a good one. went over us and towards Bengal. raining good now. power flicked off once already.

this went over the house this evening. this was the tornado warning for our area. It was trying to build as it went over the house but the mountain out front helped keep it from getting organized.

We had a re-run of last week. Sirens went off three times in nearby Wewoka, but the worst was a couple of miles east of us. ¡No mas lluvia! (No more rain!)

Oh my gosh, my lake is nothing, compared to the pictures posted here... LOTS of new rivers here in OKC.

http://www.news9.com/story/29143059/rain-moves-into-the-metro-causing-more-flooding

Despite having a huge amount of rain in our forecast for today, we have had very little fall from the sky---about a tenth of an inch so far. We've spent all evening pretty much in a dry slot, and I am not complaining. I imagine the rain finally will reach us sometime overnight, but I won't be offended if it misses us. We don't need any more, and I have a lot of tomatoes just starting to break color while others are a couple of days away from breaking color, so a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow wouldn't be helpful.

Let's hope things here in OK don't get any worse, weatherwise, than they already have been today.

OMG, Lisa! Too funny....and TOO real. Thank God for raised beds. We stood out in the drizzle today and planted the last of ours. Yes, we don't have the good sense to come in out of the rain! (Thanks Spring Fling donors!) Now....gotta work on that pepper bed next.

Here in rural NE Norman, we've had some scares this evening and they weren't the twisting kind. South Norman is flooding horribly already so I almost feel bad about being scared that the water made it a good 10" up the brick skirting of our home. At one point I did call 911 because hubby was up at the road trying to make sure the drainage was clear and it was close to overflowing. I was afraid he would slip and be washed away. Yes, he's fine now but scared the BEJESUS out of me. Our entire front area was under water for a good period of this evening, but the rain has slowed and the water has receded to a good 10 feet from the house. We had to venture out and retrieve "stored" landscape timbers to keep them from floating and blocking our tin horn that runs under Franklin road to prevent a repeat of the flooding 2 weeks ago. As soon as the weather allows - the entire "bottom" area will be cleared of ANYTHING that doesn't have roots. The raised beds are just to the east of the house and on higher ground so we hope nothing else happens.

Still hoping for a good harvest....and good drainage! Everyone stay weather aware and as safe as you can!

Paula

LOL Lisa. That's perfect.

I'm glad to read up on everyone checking in. I'm so sad by everyone being flooded. We are now flooded, as flooded as a sloped lot can be. I cut the dogs loose with the gates open so they can go and do and be where they need to be to stay dry. There are very few places !! (Boys are allergic, so they cannot come in.)

I was surprised to see 3 " in our rain guage. Last time I looked it was an inch. Everyone be safe. There was a tornado warning for tahlequah earlier and also one near pryor I think. I sure wish a thread like this wasn't necessary!

Lake Tom Steed will be at normal level by tomorrow night. Altus, Canton, and a couple others are all that are left needing more. Unbelievable.

Our place will have one of the highest totals in the state for today. Radar shows another huge area of more rain development from Fort Smith to Lawton forming and moving north.

the mesonet for bixby is about 2 miles south of my place it says so far we have gotten 5.22" in the last 24 hours. I'll get a real guage one day. Its still raining here too. Fortunately the county put a huge draining ditch in years ago beside our house. The house would flood with those levels

We have 3 1/2" in our rain gauge and its' still coming down. A river in the yard as usual.

I have yet to go outside this morning for chores. And our Internet was down until a few minutes ago. It rained HARD here all night long. A friend near Cookson texted us that Tahlequah received 18" of rain last night and that there are news crews in town, covering the story. It is very soggy here. But I drove out toward the highway, on one road, which tends to be better during flooding. It was passable, just barely. There were "creeks" running across the road, which are from flooding seasonal creeks (normally dry).

We are on the west side of Thunderbird and the water/rain last night was incredible. We no longer have the bottom half of the driveway down to our house - the gravel is all in the front yard. We are going to scoop up a few bucketfuls to pour into the larger caverns so that hopefully we can get out car out. Water ran under the barn on one side (thank goodness for the barn being built with 10X10 posts and 2X10's sides or it would have floated away) and out on the other while the poor goaties stayed up on top their shelves crying. The chicken coop was built on cement posts so it was fine although the chickens are a soggy mess and their pen is going to smell so bad when we finally get some warmth. The garden is gone. Probably my tomatoes are somewhere in one of the lake creeks. Oh well, thank goodness again for the farmer's market.

Robert, Those photos are terrifying. I'm glad that storm didn't harm y'all.

Lisa, LOL. I love the photo. It isn't that bad in my garden, for which I am grateful. We are harvesting and eating tomatoes, and I hope that continues to happen. Much depends on how much rain keeps falling and for how long.

Paula, Without raised beds, I'd have no garden, and with some crops, I don't even know if the raised beds will save the plants, but my beds are nowhere near as tall as yours. Some of my raised beds are only 4" above grade level and that works 8 years or maybe even 9 years out of 10. This is the year the shorter raised beds likely won't work out well.

George, I am pretty sure your friend was either joking or he misunderstood the area rainfall. The media is reporting anywhere from 2-6" for your area. It is just that once the soil is saturated, even a few tenths of an inch can cause incredible runoff. They issued a flash flood warning for us during the middle of the night, and we'd only had 3/10s of an inch of rain. Since our soil was heavily saturated from the 33" of rain already received (33" at our house, about 30" at our mesonet station) this year, it doesn't take much rain to instigate flash flooding.

Shaer, We had a very wet year in 2009, with a couple of feet of rain falling in about 6 weeks (almost 13" in one day) and then it stayed moderately wet all summer and fall. Our driveway washed away little by little until there was just nothing left. We scooped up gravel over and over and hauled it up the sloping driveway filling in the lowest spots but eventually we had to have a new gravel driveway put it. We had to wait, though, for a certain amount of drying to occur because the driveway was too soft for the dump truck of gravel and the equipment ued to spread it. Our backhoe guy kept checking daily until he felt like the ground was dry enough that he wouldn't get stuck, and then he came and put in the new driveway. By then it was almost 2010. I have a feeling this year may be similar, but we hope that we won't have to replace all the gravel until the heavy rainfall has ended, and that could be months away. There's nothing worse than replacing a washed-out gravel driveway and then having more rain wash it out again. Been there, done that, don't want to do it again this year. I think that was in 2007 or maybe 2004.

We've been having water wash out soil along the front side of the chicken coop but I think we can fix it ourselves if we ever get a dry day. I'm glad your barn survived. I, too, am dreading the smell of the chicken run when we finally get a warm day. Our chickens free range daily and then are locked up in the coop at night, so at least they aren't stuck in their muddy, ooey, gooey chicken run. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Sorry about your tomatoes. This certainly is a hard year for gardeners and their gardens. I know we needed the rain, and the lakes needed it desperately, but now we've swung in the opposite direction where the last thing most of us need is more rain. I'm afraid we're going to keep getting more and more and more.

Does anyone remember what blue sky and sunshine look like?

The Red River continues to run incredibly high, but since the really heavy rainfall missed us yesterday and last night (only 1" in the rain gauge this morning), it has not risen as much as they feared. It will continue to rise more as the runoff from southwestern OK continues to make its way downstream. Lake Texoma is above 640' and water began flowing over the emergency spillway early this morning. Restaurants, marinas and other businesses that were badly damaged by flooding in 2007 are damaged and closed down again. This is only the 4th time that Lake Texoma has spilled over the spillway. It takes an incredible amount of water to make a lake that big (89,000 acres) rise even one foot, and Texoma has risen at least 22 or maybe 23' in the last 30 days. It is crazy how fast it went from being low to much too high.

For those of you who haven't heard, a Claremore, OK, firefighter was swept away and died while he was trying to rescue another firefighter from high water. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and his department this morning.

There's high water rescues occurring all over Texas and Oklahoma and, for those of you who haven't heard, down in Hays County, TX, the Blanco River rose 33' in three hours. Three hours. It is hard for me to wrap my mind around that. They were (obviously) rescuing people off of rooftops and out of floating vehicles. As bad as it is here in OK, I don't think we have had any rivers rise 33' in three hours, so we can count our blessings that things here are not worse than they are.

We have puddles in our driveway so large that they are like ponds, and our ponds are lakes, and our creeks are rivers. If any more heavy rain falls, we may turn into an ocean here. I'm grateful the house is built on the highest part of our land because otherwise, it might have water inside of it.

Of course plants are waterlogged and dying. I'm actually surprised that we aren't seeing more plant death than we are.

I miss my garden. It is too wet to spend any time out there as I even have to wade through standing water in the pathways just to harvest the veggies. Pulling weeds and doing other maintenance chores is just completely out of the question.

Mosquitoes, mosquitoes, mosquitoes. I had the porch light on last night and there were hundreds and hundreds of them flying around it. I dread having to be outside working with those clouds of mosquitoes around.

It is raining lightly here now, on and off, so I won't be outside today. I'm going to stay inside and make/can blueberry-lime jam and dilly beans.

Dawn

We are OK here but have local road closures. Al went to our Church building this morning and called me before he got there and told me I should just stay home today. We have a break in the rain right now, but have more coming. I am saddened to hear of the drowning death of a Claremore firefighter.

Thanks Dawn. It's getting to be easier for me to find the weather by coming here, than by looking on my regular sites. I hate the new format of Weather Underground!

This is my county road. Tuesday's storm took out one lane and Saturday's took the second.

Molly in Blanchard

Wow, Molly. I spoke with my sister-in-law near Goldsby this morning and she said Washington residents might be able to get out if they took the long way through Blanchard. Looks like that might not happen. We have a couple of roads near our school that have been waiting to put in new culverts and are therefore blocked. And here is picture of another road in that area from May 9th.

Prayers for the family of the rescuer who lost his life in Claremore. So sorry for their loss.

Lisa, I think I found the group on FB. If it is Oklahoma Gardening Network, I submitted a request to be added. My handle is Ciruela del Arena (Spanish for Sandplum.)

I hope everyone stays dry and safe. Unbelievably, I have lilies blooming. I figured the blooms would just rot off.

Carol #3

Carol, Sometimes home is just the best place to be, isn't it?

It is my understanding that the deceased firefighter was rescuing another firefighter who'd been swept into a storm drain. That other firefighter did survive. Oddly, I first saw the news story about this while I was wide awake courtesy of the alert feature on our NOAA weather radio, and Tim was at work. I texted the news about the Claremore firefighter to him and he texted me back that he was out at a water rescue at work, and when he told me the location, I knew it was Chris' fire station (he also was at work) that would be responding to the high water rescue. With those two, I KNOW why my hair is turning gray. Happily, their water rescue went well and no one was harmed. Sometimes I think I'm better off not knowing what they are doing at work until it is already over.

George, You're not the only person who is not loving WU's new format. I'll tell you what, though. After seeing photos of some of the flash flooding, you'd think people might have had 18" of rain in some places! It is just crazy how little water is needed to cause flash flooding once the soil is really and truly completely saturated.

The water at Lake Texoma is overtopping the spillway, which sits at 640'. Although this is only the 4th time in the lake's history that this has occurred, it is the second time it has happened in the last decade, so we've lived here for 2 of those 4 times. The Corps of Engineers said that the lake currently is 35 billion gallons over capacity. That is hard to comprehend---especially when I try to understand how many of inches of rainfall have to fall over the watershed to first just fill up the lake, and then to put 35 billion extra gallons in it. It is an amount that's hard to comprehend. Then I remember how hideously high and wide the Red River is running (and running fast as well) and I know how a lot of the water made its way down to the lake.

Molly, That is so awful. We have had similar damage to some roads here, but not to our road, as far as I know....I haven't gone anywhere today. When we got 6" of rain in one day about two weeks ago, we did have a large area wash out of our VFD's fire station driveway and that could have made it difficult to respond to calls because we wouldn't have been able to get some equipment (or the firefighters' personal vehicles) in and out of the parking lot or station. Our county commissioner, however, sent his guys right out to fix it for us, for which we were supremely grateful.

I think I am starting to forget what it is like to only talk about gardening because the weather has so thoroughly pounded our yards and gardens to a pulp that none of us are actually doing much gardening. After waiting all winter for spring to finally get here, not being able to do much garden work is getting really old. The rain could taper off any time now and I'd be happy and accept having drought, uncomplaining, for the rest of the summer if only the flooding would stop. I don't think the rain or the flooding is going to stop anytime soon, though. I need some more mud and muck boots. I'm wearing out the ones I have.

Dawn

I went months with a hole in one of my muck boots. It was a real pain to try and pick my way around the barnyard, in order not to flood my right boot. Finally, just about a week ago, I broke down and got a new pair. Whoohoo! Sure is nice to pad around in the mud without it squishing around in my boot!

3 1/4" in the gauge for Saturday no flooding at the house. Started raining here about 10:00am today and has not stopped yet at 1:30pm. I need to see the sun, please!!!!!!!!! My muck boots are usually in the closet by now but I still have them right by the back door. I wear them every time I go out.

This tornado is 1/4 mile west of my house. The photo is taken by some neighbors further away. A church and dairy farm were damaged with roofs taken off. We were standing by our shelter, but couldn't see this because of all our trees. Yikes!

Very scary, glad it missed you.

Sandplum....thanks for letting me know that was you : ) I am one of the admins and I do check out people before I add them. I think all of the admins are from here :) It started to be a back up group for GW in case it "poofed", but it has grown tremendously.

George, That sounds like Tim and I. We usually try to fix things with duct tape until it cannot be fixed any more.

stockergal, We have sunshine this afternoon and it is gorgeous....kinda hurts your eyes though as they haven't seen it in so long.

The photos of the storm damage are astounding. One of the things that is so bad is that damage just keeps happening week after week after week, with cities, counties, companies and individuals having to repair first one thing and then another, and you never catch up because as soon as you repair the damage from one storm (or, even before you get a chance to make the repairs), here comes another storm with more damage.

This week on our evening news they kept showing the rising water at Lake Texoma as it began to flood buildings...the same ones it flooded in 2007. Deja vu. My only comment on that is that if I had a building that flooded, I'd rebuild it higher afterwards, in case another flood comes along in, oh, another 8 years. I guess lakeside businesses think that they won't get flooded again, but they have....and not even a decade later.

Molly, I'm glad that one missed yall. That is too close for comfort. I think we have had more tornado warnings in our county (which, historically, hasn't had a lot of tornadoes compared to most other parts of OK) this spring than we've had in any other year since we moved here in 1999. I'd like to have a year where we don't have to go to the shelter a single time, just to make up for having to run to it so many times this year.

Dawn

The sun came out just before it goes down. I think I will just go out and stand in it. Dawn, I hear you. My cellar and I are way to familiar this year, in out in out.......... mycalicogirls, I think that tornado was the closest we had to us this week, still to close for me. The dogs and I went to the cellar just in case. I have to go early to have time to get the dogs down. I hope we all can get out and get things done tomorrow,it is suppose to be sunny and windy here.

Duct tape rules. Couldn't get anything fixed without duct tape and baling wire.

Hooray for the sunshine! Even a few minutes of it completely fixes my bad attitude.

We have discovered that our most serious weather-related issue is that our cell tower apparently is flooded or damaged somehow. Down around Thackerville, there is no cell service. Up closer to Marietta, the internet service is out. We are midway in between the two towns, and we have internet service, on and off, and a little cell phone service if we use WiFi here at the house, but none at all when out and about anywhere in the county or in town. It seems inconvenient, but then inconsequential as well. Our home isn't damaged and we aren't awaiting word on missing family members like some folks in Texas are.

The sunshine sure did make the plants perk up. Their color improved instantly. Now, if only we can get enough sun to dry up the ground a little bit. That would be awesome. I may try to mow the yard with the weedeater tomorrow. I know that sounds pathetic, but the grass is tall enough that I think we would not be able to see a snake before we step on it, and I cannot imagine mowing the ground when it still has a couple of inches of standing water.

I need a vacation someplace that is hot and dry.

mycalicogirls, we have a mutual friend it seems, because she sent me the same picture! I used to live right across the street from her on that same little street. We just moved from there to south Norman about eight months ago. Small world! I'm glad it missed your house.

miraje: Shelley S. sent me the photo.

Yep, that's her! She was our realtor when we sold our house too. :)

It's a small world after all!

Molly