What an odd place for the ONLY drought to be.

Sure 'nuf, Payne Co is headed back (under watch). We're still good enough a very wet fall and winter with stop a returning drought. They admitted that, at this point, they don't know if it's drought or just August.

I believe McCurtain County's main issue is that rain has largely eluded them during the last 30 days. Other counties, like mine, that have gone only 3+ weeks without rain have been able to endure the dry spell a little better because we had heavy rainfall in early July that has kept us in slightly better shape overall than the part of McCurtain County that is showing up as being Abnormally Dry. I think that, technically, Abnormally Dry is considered more of a pre-drought condition, as they don't really say we're in drought until we hit the tan category of Moderate Drought. If you look at the map linked below, you'll see that McCurtain County's rainfall for the last 30 days is a pitiful 20% or less of their normal rainfall for the same time frame.

And, some of you might remember that I always say that long before we show up on the Monitor Map as being "Abnormally Dry", we're already terribly dry. So, I feel like we are in drought most of the time at least a month before we show up in the yellow area on the Monitor Map. I guess their textbook definition of drought is not the same as mine. And, of course, these maps and all other maps that try to categorize soil moisture, drought, etc. are showing broad-scale conditions that may or may not accurately reflect what is being seen on the ground in a smaller-scale area.

This morning when Tim was driving to work he saw a very green field on fire near Sanger, TX. When we are dry enough that the green grass is burning, which we saw last week and the week before in our neighborhood, we are abnormally dry whether the Drought Monitor says so or not. I am watering my lawn today partly to keep the grass that is still green too moist to burn (I cannot do anything about the bermuda that already has browned out and turned tan, except to hope for green regrowth) and also partly for the chickens and wild birds. When I turn on the sprinkler, they all get out there and play in the artificial rain.

Week before last, one of the counties at the SE edge of the D-FW metroplex implemented a burn ban, which shocked me when I heard it. They were flooding at the same time we were flooding, so it astonishes me they already are dry enough for a burn ban. We may be dry here, but I still feel like a burn ban, if it happens at all, would be months away because of the way the OK legislature wrote the criteria you must meet in order to have a burn ban.

Cracks in our clay that were an inch wide last week and maybe 3" deep are now at least 1.5" wide and up to 6" deep. That is how quickly everything is going downhill here.

It is hard to tell what is typical August conditions versus a return to drought, but I'd say that in SE OK, where the KBDI numbers are in the 400s to 600s (and especially in the county where it is 600+), the drought conditions are returning. That's one reason I use the KBDI---because it gives me a better idea of how dry things are overall. That comes, though, from me comparing the KBDI for our county to the conditions in my garden for many years. I've developed an understanding of what a KBDI in a certain range means for my garden and my conditions. That doesn't mean someone else in my county with different soil would be affected in the same way. Another thing I look at to help me establish in my mind how dry we are (or aren't) is the Relative Greenness of our county. Last week in our county, the R. G. reading was 71%, which I thought wasn't too bad given that we weren't getting rain. This week's number dropped to 62%, a fairly large drop for one week. As long as the trees stay green we shouldn't see it drop too much more over the next few weeks.

Dawn

Last 30 Days' Rainfall Map As A Percentage of Normal

The tree leaves are already turning brown in areas here. Johnson grass is turning also.

I've been shuffling dogs to the vet trying to clear some mange up.

Coons are really on the prowl , lost several chickens before I exterminated 3 coon in one night.

everything is looking for something to eat that isn't dried out.

Is it wrong that I like that map? I'm designing a bridge in that part of McCurtain County and we finally got the borings done last week.

I burned a couple of brush piles today. We got a little rain last night and I took the tractor and spray tank to the piles to keep the area wet. I thought it was now or never, if things don't change we will be under a burn ban soon.

I am thinking its July/August summer in Oklahoma. I think we have good submoisture, if you drop an offset disc or plow we have moisture. I believe it's just hot wind and hot temps that has dried out the upper soil levels and the vegitation has died. I can't remember a green August in Oklahoma. We have been in drought for so long any drying causes panic, but this is my opinion.

True perspective, stockergal. We shouldn't be this dry, but we're on a slope. If we keep the land that's the first thing to take care of. I'll be planting my trees instead of gardening. On the surface it looks horrid because of that hot wind. Yep.

We shouldn't be drying out as fast as we are, even though it is August. Often we never reach the point where green grass burns in the summer, but we're already there.

One of our firefighters was on the north side of Ardmore, about 30 miles from where we had the grassfires on the ranches across the road a few days ago, and the green grass, because it burns hotter, puts out a ton of heat and smoke and he could see the smoke plume here in southern Love County from 30 miles away. That sort of smoke plume catches everyone's eye and makes people sit up and pay attention and notice that we happen to be drier than we actually look. I wasn't even expecting him to make it to the fire, as he was still at work when it was paged out, but I guess when he saw that smoke plume, he headed straight home to help fight that fire. Normally, we don't have those sorts of big fires in summer----they are more of a winter thing when everything is a lot drier than it is now.

There is no panic here, or likely anywhere else in OK, but I'm watching that drought in east Texas creep our way and hoping it stops before it gets here. Some of those counties have KBDIs over 700 already, even though they were flooding when we were flooding. Just across the river in Texas, the counties east of I-35 are a lot drier than we are and have higher KBDI's than us and that is a concern more for them than for us, but I like to watch what is happening because it helps us know what to expect.

Our KBDI has been going up 15 points per day lately, meaning it is rising almost as quickly as it did in 2011. That's not a good thing. I don't get overly alarmed until it hits 500 or higher by September. That's the point where fires become hard to control here. If we don't get rain soon, we'll be 500 well before September. I won't plant anything else for fall if that happens because once we're that dry, I cannot water the garden enough for it to produce well.

Because we have an El Nino, and it seems like it is going to be a strong one, we should have good rainfall in the fall and probably in the winter as well, but there's no guarantees because other climate/weather patterns factor into what happens as well. I just hope that rain comes.

Just send your extra rain down here please. The small rain sprinkles we have had (1/100th of an inch on two occasions, or maybe 3) hasn't had much impact. Our KBDI is up another 15 points today. All it would take would be a couple of inches of rain to fix things for a while, but it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.

I don't want flooding rain. People still haven't repaired all the damage, and some flood plain land along the river still is buried under a lot of silt and standing puddles, so those fields won't be useful at all this year for grazing or haying. Our county recently got approved for individual assistance to families from FEMA (previously the assistance was only for cities and such), but that aid still won't help the folks whose main problem is that the flooding made their land unusable (or washed it away).

Normally, even in a strong El Nino, we only get good (i.e. not flooding) rain in autumn and winter and the flooding rains are more of a spring thing, so I hope the autumn rains are just beneficial and not damaging.