4/29/2016 Severe Weather Check-In Thread
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
8 years ago
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Kate OK USA (7b)
8 years ago
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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Wicked Weather Forecast For July 29th-30th
Comments (22)Jay, I missed your earlier post because I was writing mine. I was trying to watch the radar last night to see if you got more rain, but the storm split a couple of times and I wasn't sure if the rain reached you. I'm glad you got those plants staked so any wind that accompanied the storms couldn't blow them over. Three and a half inches of rain is great and I suppose the seven inches is wonderful too although that much in a short period can cause problems, especially in tight soil. I'm sure you'll get additional fruitset during this cool spell. How wonderful that will be. I am seeing a lot of new blooms the last couple of days, so think our plants will set more as well if the highs don't go too high. We just haven't cooled off nearly as much down here as many of you who are a lot further north. Today is the first day that it feels really good and cool outside. Any cooldown at this time of year is good though, even if it only means a high temp of 90 or 95 instead or 98 or 102. Y'all, our rain arrived very late, around 3 a.m. and was a very loud thunder-and-lightning storm with a little rain thrown in. We had a little more than 3/4s of an inch, so added to this week's earlier rain, we have had 1.7" this week, which is a lot of rain for us in July. My garden is looking deliriously happy and quite green. No violent weather here. I was watching the storm make its way towards us when it was still in Texas and producing winds of 100 mph, but I knew it would run out of steam (in terms of windspeed and such) before it got here, and it did. I'm glad a lot of you who have been needing rain up there in central OK have gotten a lot this week--your drought type numbers (rainfall, fractional water, KBDI) were starting to worry me. George's and Scott's drought numbers still do worry me. Lisa, Just a little more rain and your gauge will start overflowing like it did last year! I'm glad you got your new car out of the hail zone in time. Carol, So the rain was just a little late arriving? Better late than never. George, I have been mystified by the way the rain keeps missing y'all there in Tahlequah. I have watched it closely since spring, and it does astonish me that y'all are having our usual 'dry holes' in the radar/rainfall. Never in my life would I have thought you'd ever have a rainfall shortage there (or that Scott's area would be abnormally dry either). I am hoping and praying that you and Jerreth get rainfall there so that your garden will produce well. I hope Scott gets some rain too. Y'all have been far too dry for far too long. You have my sympathy, George, because I understand the frustration of being surrounded by rain that somehow continues to miss your particular location. You are starting to sound like me last year, but you can't help it....you're experiencing similar conditions and frustrations. Hopefully you'll get some rain today and, if not today, then soon. Down here, we always say it takes a flood to end a drought, so it wouldn't surprise me if you get some really heavy rainfall to end your drought there, and hopefully it will be sooner rather than later. Y'all know that the Oklahoma weather is all messed up and out of sync when Marietta has had more rain than Tahlequah. A lot of us still have rain in the forecast on one or more of the next few days. How odd is this rainy pattern for the end of July/beginning of August? Now, let us all hope for a cooler-than-usual August, because that would be almost too good to be true. Dawn...See MoreSunday Severe Weather Check-In Thread
Comments (19)I think we ended up with 6.1" yesterday, bringing our May total so far to about 13" and our year-to-date total in the upper 20s. The flash flooding damage is massive, and we cancelled our Mother's Day cookout/dinner as Tim and Chris were out with the fire department working motor vehicle accidents, reporting flooded roads so our county commissioner could send out guys to barricade those roads, and participating in a high water rescue in which one of our firefighters(so proud of him!) came across a person about to be swept off a bridge and into a creek that would feeds into the Red River fairly close by and rescued her from the vehicle, and the rest of our firefighters rushed there to help him and to try to save the car from washing away (and also to try to prevent other people from driving into that flooded roadway). Other than that, nothing at all happened here in our neighborhood. I understand Hwy 77 in our part of the county may be iffy in a few places today, but there was a lot more damage in town including damaged or destroyed roadways, as far as I know, than out here in the sticks. We'll have our cookout and dinner this evening in perfect sunny weather and without rain falling on our heads and we'll be able to enjoy it more than we would have yesterday when the skies were black and rain wouldn't stop falling. The Red River is about to crest, or already has crested, at a little over 30'. For perspective, that means any equipment or cattle in the river bottom areas had to be moved to an elevation 6' higher in order to stay out of the flood waters. We saw farmers/ranchers with bottom land areas cutting and baling and moving their hay to higher ground last week, and it is a good thing, because some of those same bottom lands are under several feet of water now. I'm glad they were able to get that first cutting of hay harvested so they wouldn't lose it to the flood. The Red River is making folks nervous, and I am sure all of you likely have flooding rivers nearby that are making folks feel the same way. It has flooded much worse here before and still is 10-11 feet lower than its record flood stage reached in 1987 at the I35 bridge between Cooke County TX and Love County OK. I am worried about the Kingston area Marshall County as they usually get hit hard by all this water flowing downstream to Lake Texoma. I don't know how the plants in my garden are going to handle all this moisture. The couple of days of drying out that we have before the next rain event will help a little, but not enough. We'll know soon if the raised beds have saved the plants that are growing in them. I know everything is going to have all kinds of fungal diseases. I sprayed with Daconil a couple of weeks ago, but rain washes it off, so it isn't really helpful if it is raining every day, and that's doubly true if you're getting 3-6" a day. Some years are just this way and we just have to wait it out and see how our plants respond. It is hard to be unhappy about rain when we generally are in desperate need of more of it. I'm still not happy about the fact that it is coming in such ridiculous amounts. The weeks that typically bring our rainiest weather still lie ahead of us, and that's food for thought, isn't it? Hope everyone is well and that your plants are hanging in there and surviving....See MoreSevere Weather Check-In Thread for Tues, 05-19-2015
Comments (18)I've linked the latest 7-day QPF below. It looks horrible....well, unless you're still in drought, in which case maybe it does look good. We only have 2" in the rain gauge, and I say "only" because rain was much heavier in other parts of southern OK, so I feel lucky we didn't get more. I have no words to describe the mosquitoes here----there are just clouds of them in the air. They are waiting by the back door when I walk out in the mornings. I think Miracle May is going to give us ridiculous numbers of certain pests like mosquitoes. With ants, I've been using a Spinosad ant bait, but I am not sure how effective it is when rain is falling constantly. It always has worked well in the garden's raised beds, but they drain a lot better than the rest of the yard. I don't know how we're ever going to be able to mow again. I might try "mowing" tomorrow with the string trimmer---not 2 or 3 acres, but at least the parts of the yard nearest the house. Hmmm. I wonder how long the big lake-like puddles would have to sit in the yard in order for the bermuda grass to die. Is that even possible? If so, I hope the puddles persist that long. I noticed piles of sawdust alongside the wood boards that edge the asparagus bed and found carpenter ants there, so I ordered an ant bait containing abamectin to use there. It is organic and is effective but pricey. My normal routine of spraying Garrett Juice + Medina Orange Oil or liquid molasses to kill fire ants doesn't work when it is raining almost daily. I think the rain washes away the sprayed products before they can work. We have rain in our forecast every day for the next week, and that has been true most of the month. We don't necessarily get rain every day, but we get it on far too many days lately. The Red River now is expected to crest at a little over 35' on Thursday at the bridge between Thackerville, OK, and Gainesville, TX, and then begin falling, but if more rain keeps falling, then the river level may not fall as expected. Poor Lake Texoma. It is getting tons of runoff. They opened the floodgates a day or two ago and have been trying to release as much as possible but not so much that they are contributing to downstream flooding. A couple of days ago, Texoma had risen 19' in the last 30 days, and I expect that number is rolling over to 20' today. If any of you have plans for Lake Texoma for Memorial Day weekend, I'd call ahead and confirm that the campground or marina facility you're using is still fully open for business. Some businesses have been shutting down as rising water begins to interfere with access to their facility or the safe operation of their facilities. Robert, Our driveway has ravines like yours, and this morning little streams of water are cascading down those ravines. It is hard to figure out when to fix it, but I think it is still too early here. I doubt we'll do much before July because normally in a rainy year like this, we stay really rainy well into June. Scott, It is so good to see lake and river levels recovering in the western half of the state, but the ones in the eastern half are too full now and the number of flood warnings and flash flood warnings seems to be escalating. To our south in Texas, there's a lot more flooding than we are seeing here. I do hope that the rain is falling slowly enough that a lot of it can absorb and recharge the aquifers instead of just all running off and causing flooding. I feel fortunate that those of us north of the Red River have it there to catch all the runoff. A lot of the problem areas in North Texas aren't even from flooded rivers, but rather from flooded creeks that cannot channel the runoff into larger bodies of water fast enough because creeks are just so much smaller than rivers. I feel sorry for everyone in the Norman area that is being flooded. It just seems like flooding is the new normal for Norman, at least this year. Oh wow, a bright yellowish-white light suddenly is shining through my living room windows. Either the Mother Ship from another universe has come to beam me up, or the sun is shining. I'm hoping it is sunshine. I don't intend to step foot in my waterlogged garden today. I harvested everything I could yesterday, so there shouldn't be anything out there that needs to be harvested today. The pathways are like little canals and have been testing the limits of my waterproof boots. I might start some icebox watermelon and muskmelon seeds in paper cups inside today. The snap peas have powdery mildew, so far only on the lower leaves and not on the peas themselves. Once the PM starts in weather like this, it doesn't go away and once it starts affecting the peas, I yank out the plants. I need to have replacement plants ready to go into that bed and climb that trellis. If I get too bored indoors, I might change my mind and go out later today and make a list of which tomato varieties have set fruit versus which ones have not. I think there's more green tomatoes on the plants than I had thought, so we still might have a good tomato year if the raised beds can drain well enough to keep the plants happy and productive. 7-Day QPF...See MoreMemorial Day Severe Weather Check-In Thread
Comments (24)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...See More
Sandplum1
8 years agostockergal
8 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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luvncannin
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8 years agosoonergrandmom
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8 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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8 years agoOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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