Please don't play in the mud and compact your soil, Dawn.

It does look like the storms are knocking on Dawn's door. There was a brief period of S U N here, not as bright now. It is SOOO sultry. I threatened to turn the heat on just to dry out the air. It has been too cool for the A C to do much, though the brief sunshine warmed things up a lot. Be safe all, I hope this thing passes without too many problems.

I was only walking in the well-compacted mud between raised beds and it has been compacted for years and years.

I'm indoors now and it is raining cats and dogs here. Looks like some thunderstorms popped up in advance of the squall line. I've been playing navigator trying to get Tim home from Dallas before the worst of the weather gets here. Our satellite TV already is out thanks to the heavy rainfall. I expect we'll lose internet any moment now, so am typing fast.

Y'all be careful. This thing, at least as it currently appears at our house, is a big rainmaker. The heavy rain that missed us for the last few days just found us.

I'm just grateful that at this point it is only rain and not tornadoes, flooding, etc.

* I came back quickly to add that we are now severe thunderstorm warned and it includes the threat of hail to the size of ping pong balls. Tim is within 10 miles of home, so hopefully he can avoid the hail.

For those of you who follow storm chasers, Chris tells me that one of Reed's Dominator vehicles is passing through Ardmore now. I hope it keeps going further south....much further.

Things are a rumbling here in Durant...... They say we are not supposed to get anything for another 3 hours, but I think we have 30 minutes before it hits us. Looks nasty too.

Yes, you're about to get it. The "thing" that wasn't expected for another couple of hours is the derecho or squall line that has been approaching us for several hours now. What happened is some little thunderstorms popped up well ahead of the squall line and that is what just passed through here and is approaching you now, kfrinkle.

I wasn't watching the clock real closely, but it rained hard for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and we received 0.19" at our Mesonet station so far, but have received 0.65" in our rain gauge at our house, several miles SE of our county's mesonet station.

Now, the next storm is approaching from our SW and it is dark back in that direction and I can hear the thunder.

With the first cell, from the time I heard the first rumble of thunder until the time it got here, I had maybe 10 minutes to put up all my gardening tools, close and lock the garden gate to keep the wild animals out, get the cats and dogs inside, warn Tim he was driving into/through a big storm and get myself indoors. Whew! I did get some weeds pulled out of the potato beds and the pathway north of them so at least I accomplished something this morning.

kfrinkle, Bryan County is tornado-warned. Hope you are in your shelter in case that wall clouds drops a tornado. KXII is covering it live and says there are two possible rotations---one between Durant and Blue and one near Kemp. Those are radar-indicated rotations. Stay safe!

I pulled up the NOAA radar of Texas and Oklahoma and saw what is coming. I want to cry. We are in so much pain, miserably wet and fly and bug infested it is unread. Still, I we are only wet. No flooding. But I've had enough. I'm crying Uncle. Mother nature needs to forgive or something.

Oh how I hope everyone will be okay. Hang in there, ya'll.

I got home in the nic of time. we drove through the tornado warning area just minutes before it unloaded. mostly rain and wind here at home.

Well, looks like it skipped right over us in Durant. Sirens went off, twice! Wife and I were with our cats in the inner bathroom/hallway area, which is as good a shelter as we have for now. We never lost power or internet, so we were able to keep track of the storm and the locations of the tornadoes pretty easily.

Just wind and rain here in several rounds. We ended up with another 1.3" of rain that we absolutely did not need, leading to minor flash flooding of area roads for a while. It all is calmed down now.

I think that Bryan County and Atoka County got the worst of the wind damage and tornadoes. There are scattered reports of destruction, though it is not yet clear in each case just yet if the destruction was from tornadoes or straight-line winds. I suspect maybe it was some of both, just in different areas. There is one media report of a deceased person and a destroyed home in Blue, OK (east of Durant in Bryan County) in an area that had been tornado-warned. My heart goes out to her family and friends.

It is clearing to our west so I think that we don't have anything here to worry about tonight, but southeastern and eastern OK and Arkansas still have a lot of weather going on.

Can we please have one day where we can go outside and stay there and enjoy working outdoors without having to run for the house to check the radar, NOAA radio, or TV screen? Please. Just. One. Nice. Day.

Robert, I was watching as that storm tracked along through the counties between me and you and was hoping you had at least one eye on the sky. Glad you made it home safely.

This thing blew through hard and fast, and we had at least 4 separate rounds of rain. I think that the hardest rain in our area may have fallen near/around the Roosevelt Bridge as there is flooding there and there's been some water rescues.

When is it all gonna end? I don't mean a specific day. I'd be happy just to know which month the flooding is going to stop.

The TV said it would cross the AR. OK. line at 6:14 It hit here at 6:18, but so far just heavy rain and fairly strong wind.

Larry, glad to know it is only wind and rain because it really looked bad.

I measured another 2+ inches in my back garden by the time this storm ran its course. I emptied out 4+ inches out of my rain gauge yesterday...

Since Saturday morning we have received over 6 inches bringing May's total to over 14 inches. No damage here though other than a few limbs on the ground. Believe it or not we still have deadfall from the ice storm of Jan 09 coming down every time the wind blows.

5.2 plus 1.5 equals more than 6 doesn't it? Almost 7. Plus the prior 8.3 So 15. We're good for a while.

We are still afloat in NE Norman. Heard from Scott Calvert and they are all okay also. He too has roads washed out all over the place.

Last night we received another approximately 1/2." But Saturday night through Sunday AM we got at least 5." The ground is so saturated that I can stand in my back yard and HEAR the water flowing through the pasture and down to the creek. I had to make a trench around the front of the house, as, for the first time in 10 years, we had water standing against the foundation of the house, threatening our walls. Doing chores this morning I had a couple moments when my muck boots were in danger of getting sucked off my feet! I can't remember another time when I couldn't cultivate in my main garden, within 24 hours of rain. But yesterday I couldn't. It was just too gummy out there.

Sunday we just stayed home and didn't try to go anywhere. The low water bridges were too far under water.

George

Memorial Day was pretty dry for SW OKC we received 1/4". We missed most of the line, it fell apart and rebuilt east of here. They are saying that next week we turn the corner to dryer weather. Hope they are right.

Some years back we had the corner of the house peired because it was sinking. The last few years doors wouldn't shut (again) and cracks formed. This week all the doors are shutting properly. I wonder just how much I will have to water the foundation to keep that corner up.

Amy, We were laughing about that same sort of issue the other day. Usually, we are dry and the clay contracts and we have a hard time getting doors to shut and lock properly. Tim is always having to make little adjustments to the hinges and locks to keep them working well. Beginning with last summer's and autumn's rainfalls, the clay expanded and the house was more or less back to normal and everything was working. Now, with continual rainfall for months on end, the constantly expanding clay has the doors getting harder to close again, but in an opposite way from when the problem is caused by contracting clay. You have to laugh about it or it would make a person crazy. We spend most of our time either extremely dry or extremely wet, and precious little of it "just right".

I hope drier weather is coming. At our house, we how are just a smidgen under 35" of rainfall for this calendar year. Our mesonet station is about 4" behind us, but even so, it has almost a year's worth itself. Normal or average rainfall for us is 34" based on all the years the Mesonet station has existed or about 38 or 39" based on the 30-year-average. I cannot imagine what we'll end up for this entire year if the rainfall doesn't drop off drastically.

George, Been there, done that, with the water trying to suck the boots off my feet. I'm gonna need a boat if it keeps raining.

We have sunshine today, y'all, and have had it for at least a couple of hours so it is hot and muggy outside where Tim is mowing and indoors as well, where I've been in the kitchen blanching and freezing oodles of snap peas and snap beans. At least it is a good year for legumes. My food processing is up for the day, so now the kitchen can cool off but Tim will be out there making mud ruts in the lawn with the mower for a while yet.

I hope to be outside in the garden tomorrow morning picking tomatoes, and probably more sugar snap peas. Of course, that depends on whether or not it rains tonight.

There's tons of wildflowers blooming all over now, on both sides of the river, so at least the bees, butterflies and other flying things should be thrilled. This morning we had a blue bird world out in the yard with all sorts of the birds coming for their birdseed breakfast---we had indigo buntings (which I've only seen a handful of times, mostly in the last year), painted buntings, bluebirds and blue jays. There were tons of other birds, most notably mourning doves and cardinals, but I was enthralled by the many kinds of blue birds all visiting at the same time. In every direction that I looked, I could watch blue birds flying here and there, jockeying for position in the area where I'd scattered some bird seed for them.

Dawn

The garden was so happy to day with the sunshine. The birds and butterflies were busy. The barn cats were all just soaking up the sun. My dogs were sunbathing on the grass.

Dawn, I took your idea and ran the trimmer over the back yard,my left arm is killing me but the yard looks better. I was just going to do a little area but you know how that goes you just keep working and working. Thankfully the little shower we got about 3:00 made me stop.

Still to wet to do much but I am slowly working on my to do list. Maybe I can do a little mowing tomorrow if the weather holds.

stockergal, I was going to string-trim the lawn yesterday, but Tim is mowing-obsessed (what is it with men and their mowers/lawn tractors? It is like mowing puts him in a trance and he tunes out the rest of the world and just mows.) and got out the riding mower and mowed the acre closest to the house. Of course it left big mud ruts from the tires everywhere, but the grass is short again and he is thrilled. Of course, it was too wet to even contemplate hooking up the grass catcher and catching clippings for mulch, so there's little lumps of wet grass clippings everywhere. At least we'll be able to see snakes if they are hanging around, and I haven't seen many lately. Maybe a lot of them drowned on the day we had 6" of rain in about 6 or 8 hours.

Yesterday, our dogs were rolling on the concrete apron around the garage and then on the part of the gravel driveway nearby which is drier than the part that runs down to the road. Our driveway has basically become a drainage canal with water running down it most of the day as water seeps out of the higher ground to our south and trickles down to the driveway.

The cats are kinda cranky and spending more time on the wraparound porch than usual. They've apparently gotten tired of having constantly wet and muddy paws. I don't blame them.

There's tons more songbirds out yesterday and this morning and they certainly are enjoying the drier weather. We had a double rainbow over our house after last night's rain and that was pretty cool. We couldn't stay outside and enjoy it though because there still was thunder and lightning to our northwest that was too close for comfort.

I woke up to sunshine this morning. It was disorienting to wake up in a bright room after so many weeks of gray, cloudy skies.

Dawn

Dawn, I woke up to sushine also. Shocked me so bad , but made me happy and I was smililing all day long? It has been sunny and dry all day today. Even got a little mowing done around the house. The birds, butterflies, dog, cats and I spent the entire day outside. I think the rain is coming back for a few days, but they have next week dry. I hope they are right. I have morning glories and moonflower vines coming up from seeds that I just pushed in the ground between rains, I thought they had drowned.