Just looking at the statistics of the issue, if everyone who felt we do play a part in the change were to do what they could, there would be SOME change. Any improvement is worth accomplishing. Plus, the things we could do are more efficient, less wasteful and those can have an immediate, bottom line improvement on the cost of living. Even if nothing can improve the outcome, I like the knowledge that I am not wasting the utilities. I love knowing I am spending about as little as possible for electricity, gas (both natural and fuel) and water as I comfortably can. The upside is it satisfies me. The downside is when you've already tightened your belt concerning their use, mandatory conservation efforts begin hurting much faster than they do for many others. Kim

Jay, Ever since you posted that your dog was shedding, I've been saying to myself "I guess I'm wrong and the dog is right....." LOL. The early shedding really threw me for a loop because I just didn't feel like winter was done with us yet. I've seen our dogs and cats shed early, like when we're having 70 degree days in January for example, but I've never seen them regrow a thicker coat almost immediately. Maybe it is because my cats and dogs spend a lot of time either inside the house or insulated (but unheated) garage when the weather is either very hot or very cold. I hope we're on the southern edge of a moist area too if the alternative is little or no moisture. A neutral El Nino doesn't scare me too much in terms of rainfall because in our part of the state a neutral El Nino generally brings us above-average moisture. On the other hand, we just had a year with above-average moisture and I don't know that we've had two back-to-back good rainfall years since we've been here. Of course, we've only been here 11 years. As long as they don't start saying the dreaded words 'La Nina', I don't worry about drought. Once La Nina is headed this way, I do get concerned. Most La Nina years bring most of Oklahoma a lot of moisture but it brings our southern edge of OK little to no moisture for 6 or 8 or 10 months.....La Nina gave us our 2008-2009 drought in southern OK and all the wildfires that lasted until the rain really began falling in earnest in April 2009. The weather is so bad at Sky Harbor Int'l Airport in Phoenix that they have cancelled flights for the rest of today. I think it is wind, but assume some rain might be falling too and that means it is moving our way. El Nino is just beating up on the western US. Tonight is our last 'warm' night for a while, and then our lows start going back into the 30s again. In a normal year, I'd be seeing the first hatch of the grasshoppers in the pastures about now, and I haven't seen a one. I don't know if they are (a) frozen to death, (b) drowned to death, or (c) waiting for your shedding/unshedding dog to send out the word that it is OK...or not OK..... Dawn

Ooh, what I don't want is a warmer winter. This year we had a record breaking warm February and not much other cold during winter, either (just a weird Nov. Alaska blast that ruined things), and what we got as a result was a glut of yellow jackets and wasps infesting everything. The poor hummingbirds can't use their feeder, even with nearby traps full of bugs' nasty bodies. And I'm outside blasting the feeder with jets of water and stomping drowning yellow jackets that fall to the ground from the feeder. Ugh. What I'd like from El Nino is a moderation in the record breaking heat we keep having, and the severe windstorms that seem to be increasing--and of course, I'd like an end to our drought, too. It's hard to tell when we're in a drought because we receive so little precipitation, anyway, but we'll be lucky to end this year with eight or nine inches of rain, snow etc. All in all, it's the high winds when it's 100+ degrees that do the most damage that is immediately visible. I'm surprised I have any roses left! Diane

And the bad news also is that California and Californians likely could suffer greatly if California takes a hard hit from El Nino. The same sort of rains that may bring drought relief also are likely to cause flooding, mudslides, landslides and the destruction and even death that accompany them. This is doubly true in the areas where millions of acres have been burned by wildfire and those acres lack the vegetation to hold the soil in place during heavy rainfall. I feel sorry for California and its people if El Nino hits them hard with too much rain at one time. El Nino is only one part of the puzzle though, and other climate patterns will play a role in how much any given area is affected (or not affected) by the El Nino conditions. Sometimes here in southern OK, El Nino weather (late autumn through late winter and sometimes into spring) usually bring us a wetter, warmer season but not always. Sometimes the rain stays south of us, in Texas, for example, and doesn't really make it this far north. I'd hate to see California and her people have the sort of flooding rains that were widely experienced this past spring and early summer in Oklahoma. And, just look at OK as an example of how short-lived drought relief can be even when it does occur. Many areas that were under water in May through June and even into July already are back into Abnormally Dry, or Moderate, Severe or Extreme Drought now. It is hard to believe that all those flooding rainstorms couldn't keep some areas out of drought for more than a couple of months. I hope California and other dry western areas get the desperately needed rainfall but I also hope that rain can somehow fall and help them more than it hurts them. What they really need is for the precipitation to fall in the mountains as snow. The snowpack would melt more slowly and that would allow moisture to soak into the soil more deeply instead of running off. I've been watching the SSTs since at least March and reading all the El Nino updates issued by government weather agencies and it has made me simultaneously look forward to and yet also dread the effects of El Nino. In some parts of the world, the developing El Nino already has contributed to some dangerous weather patterns and events. I also find it horrible that the very El Nino I'm usually happy to see because it generally means rain for us actually brings a great deal of death and destruction to other parts of the world. I doubt the people in those areas ever are happy to see El Nino develop. On a personal note, we are so incredibly dry here that I cannot imagine what the winter fire season (which apparently begins today with the issuance of our first Red Flag FIre Warning of the season) will be like if the expected El Nino rainfall misses us. Our KBDI in my county is now the highest it has been since August 2011 at 684 on a scale of 0-800. We normally don't even reach the upper 600s until winter time, long after frost and freezing weather has killed annual vegetation and all the dead and dormant vegetation is dried out and cured. Having numbers like that this year (and in some areas they are well into the upper 700s) before even the first frost is a huge warning sign. We need rain and we need it desperately across much of the state. We lived in Texas during the last super El Nino, which was in 1996-97, so I don't know what the weather was like up here in OK during that time, but down there we had heavy rainfall and flooding well into spring and a cooler, milder summer. Despite being in severe drought here, we already have winter weeds sprouting in the lawn (where I have watered occasionally as a form of fire protection) but not in the garden where it is too dry and I'm not watering. Our trees are in pitiful condition and our fields look so dry that you'd think we'd already had the first freeze here. We need a wet year, so we need for the El Nino rainfall to hit us this winter, but we don't need the extreme and excessive rainfall that El Nino brings some years. We still have damaged areas in our county not even repaired yet from the spring and early summer rainfall. The farmers here plowed in late August so they could plant their winter wheat but the rainfall has been so skimpy that the plowed fields are bare. I'm not sure what that means for the winter wheat season, but it is a poor way for it to start out. In the worst-case scenario, we stay too hot and too dry for the seed to sprout until frost arrives, at which point it will be too late and too cold to get a good stand. I haven't even attempted to clean out the summer garden because we are so hot and dry that snake activity is high, so it seems like the only cover crop my garden will get this year will be from weeds. That is okay with me. Weeds (especially the ones that are dynamic acumulators) will suffice as a cover crop and as compost pile material if that's all we have.