Quite here in SW OKC. Everything blew up east of us. We got a little rain when the storms were building over us and moving east. Yes, I think we will see a lot of tornado damage, never want to see that.

Nothing near us.

All of the storm missed us. Still waiting on reports from Stillwater. Hope all are okay.

Fine here. We got a tiny amount of rain and the sirens went off -- it was looking bad a little east of us.

I've tried to post here 3 times and maybe the Garden Web Gnomes followed me. Blocked me every time I tried to post. ANYWAY.... fine here too. I'm close to hazelinok. Same conditions. I DO know that okoutdoorsman is good also. Would really like to hear that Wufleton (aka Krista) is okay too?! She was in the path of danger but don't think there was a touch-down.

Barely even a sprinkle here in bixby.

We are good. A few sprinkles and some gnarly clouds but everything, including the hail, stayed south of us. Krista and Chaf

I think we got some hail here in Durant, and a tornado formed after the storm passed us here. I was actually up in OKC and heading home on I-35 when that storm kicked up. We had our eye on the weather and waited an extra 20 minutes or so and we had sunny skies all the way back to Durant. Off to the east as we were heading south, we could see those incredibly massive storm clouds rotating and building, it was scary impressive.

Just a half inch of slow rain here in Adair Co. Nice, but we still need more.

Glad everyone is doing okay. Got a few sprinkles here near Sperry and that's all. Prayers go out to the friends and family of those experiencing loss or damage.

All seems to be okay in Broken Arrow.

BA and Bixby can thank me, I had lawn chairs over tomato plants in case of hail and a bed I need to work covered with a tarp. Since I was prepared, not even rain. Lot of wnd, though.

Great job, Amy. I hope BA & Bixby are appropriately grateful.

We had nickle-sized hail in parts of Thackerville and hail up to the size of quarters in Marietta, but at our house (we are midway between the two, but a tad west) we had nothing. It is a good thing. Last week I removed all the hoops and netting and nothing in my garden is hail-protected now, nor will it be, as everything has gotten too big to cover. If we can just make it through May, we usually don't have hail hit our garden after that. Still, there's lots of May weather left to endure.

We did have 58 mph winds with our first storm yesterday and it broke a bunch of onions, but the corn came through that really well. It's always something.

Heavy rain and wind here in Ft. Smith, but no damage.

Is this recent or has it always been this way? I live in CA and I think Oklahoma is so beautiful. I wrote about the storm on the CA gardening forum....I see trucks driving on the road on the weather channel and I wonder how people can drive but maybe there's no choice. I was very sad to see the damage again and I'm glad you are all safe.

It's always been this way. Even as a kid growing up in Texas, I knew that Oklahoma had a lot more tornadoes than we did just an hour further south in Texas. It is a matter of geography---by its location in the middle of the continent, Oklahoma is subjected to a lot of colliding weather systems that result in some wicked weather. April and May are really rough here.

I saw more funnel clouds our first year in southern OK (1999) than I had seen in 39 years of living in Texas. It was a big wake-up call. The following year, we put in a tornado shelter. When we did that, there were only a couple of very old tornado shelters at homes on our rural road---mostly sort of home-made shelters built in the 1930s or so. Now? Largely, I think, due to the fact that we hear more about each and every tornado now that we have news available 24/7, almost every home on our road has either a built-in safe room inside the house, or an in-ground tornado shelter. It used to be that everyone fled to the homes of the few of us who have shelters when weather was threatening, but now everyone has their own shelters. I truly believe that, by building code, tornado shelters or safe rooms should be required in all new construction in Oklahoma. Shelters save lives.

You learn to be very weather-aware living here. I always have a radio in the garden with me, and I get weather alerts on my cell phone from several sources. It is wise to always keep an eye on the skies when gardening. They were days in our early years here when bad weather could sneak up on me---I'd be weeding or planting or whatever, and I'd look up and see a huge black cloud approaching and I'd literally run for the house, hoping to get to the house before the storm got here. That doesn't happen any more. I always keep an eye on the forecast and on the skies and don't let dangerous weather sneak up on me any more.

Oklahoma is a very beautiful place to live. I love the rolling plains---the hills and valleys and the beautiful grasslands. The people here are awesome----strong, tough, compassionate, caring....just truly good-hearted people. The best people I've ever know anywhere are right here in Oklahoma. We all have to watch out for each other, though, because the weather can go from beautiful to wicked in minutes. A person who can successfully garden in Oklahoma can successfully garden anywhere in the world because we have so many weather challenges here: tornadoes, microbursts, hail up to the size of softballs or grapefruit, torrential rainfall (the record at our house is 12.87" of rain in 24 hours), dust storms, strong winds (50-70 mph or higher), wildfires, frequent droughts, flash floods and longer term persistent flooding......and that's just in the spring and summer. In winter we often have wicked ice storms that bring down trees and power lines. Or, we can be 65 degrees one day, and 10 degrees that night....or zero degrees or lower. The rapid changes are hard on plants, and the people who care for those plants. Once you've lived and gardened here, you've learned to cope with every possible type of weather challenge that Mother Nature can throw at you.

I'm glad everyone's okay.

It's very kind of your to stop by, kitty. You're welcome to chat with us any time!

I'll never forget the Hawaiian on Craiglist that compared tornadoes to hurricanes. She wrote up the forum to scold Oklahomans for not leaving the city of Moore before that tornado before it arrived.

In the end it reminded me how harrowing Oklahoma weather truly is and how gosh-darned tough Oklahomans are.

I used to think "At least we don't have earthquakes", sigh.

Bon, I hope someone set her straight since tornadoes largely appear out of nowhere and can descend from the sky without warning. It's not like we know a tornado is coming and can pack up and leave 2 days in advance of its arrival. Hey, maybe we all should just pack up and leave Oklahoma for all of April and May in order to be out of town/out of state when the twisters descend from the sky.

Amy, Me too! That's all over now, though, isn't it. Tim and I always joke and call Oklahoma "the new California". We have it all, don't we? Earthquakes, drought, wildfires.....well, we don't have the ocean and the beaches.

Yesterday the NWS took the rain out of our forecast for last night. Ha! Shortly after I went to bed, the weather radio went off about 4 or 5 times in fairly rapid succession because a little freak thunderstorm had developed over NE Love County, near Lake Murray. It was in an area where 3 or 4 counties come together, and it stayed stationary, raining in essentially the same place, for an hour or two, so they kept extending the severe thunderstorm warning for a few more minutes and then a few more and then a few more....and then they followed up with a flash flood warning. Up to 2" of rain fell in that area. We didn't get any rain, but we had their thunder and lightning for quite a while. Our weather doesn't pay any attention to what the forecasters predict and just does whatever the heck it is going to do, and it kinda drives me crazy. We're stuck with it though, and we sure can't do anything to change it or control it.

Dawn

@Amy I know, right?

@Dawn, I went on a rant on that post.

We didn't get any rain either and it shows. I've been seeding like crazy with hope for rain soon.

Dorothy, Be careful what you wish for. Looks like your area got plenty of rain last night.

Bon, Good for you! I hope you ranted loudly and for a long time. Another thing I hate is when people say they don't know why people choose to live in Oklahoma with all these tornadoes. Hmmm. Have they not noticed that every single state in the USA has its own unique weather challenges???? And, yet, people choose to live in every state.

Carol, I noticed that. I hope Dorothy got enough of that rain that she is happy with the moisture and not so much that her garden is flooded.

Here's the rainfall map for those of you wondering what in the world we are talking about. Note that somewhere near Dorothy the red color on the map indicates at least 8" of rain just since midnight. I hope that area is not enduring flash flooding, but I suspect they are, or at least they were during the night when all that rain fell. The sad thing about so much rain falling so quickly, though, is that a lot of it runs off instead of soaking into the ground. If my memory regarding Dorothy's location is correct though, I think most of the heavy rain missed her.

Rainfall Since Midnight

Dawn

I'm glad you all are okay. One fatality is too many. :-(

We still haven't heard from Dorothy....or George. Wasn't the rain just about as heavy in part of Cherokee County as it was in Adair County? Hopefully they both got beneficial rain and not flooding rainfall.

Have y'all looked at the forecast? It seems like a lot of Oklahoma has rain in the forecast for virtually every day for the next seven days, except for today. Is today the last good day?

merrybookwyrm, How are you doing? Your part of Texas certainly has had its share of challenging weather this year as well. I think the hail and flooding are determined to hit every county in TX this year one way or another.

Dawn

We really need rain, badly. We had a very wet spring but the wind this last week scorched everything.

I agree. We had been pretty wet overall, but the May rainfall has kept missing us, and the soil in the raised beds was shockingly dry when I checked it today. We should have plenty of chances over the next week to get some good rainfall.

Rain. Yay!

George is ok.

I have seen posts from both George and Dorothy with no mention of a storm problem although I think George has had a small 'drama' in his life which he will probably share in a few days. LOL

Uh, yes. Sorry not to show up here any sooner. Life has been very very hectic and I left with my wife for a few days in Costa Rica. The first morning after our arrival we went for a walk on a rocky/sandy beach and came across a tree with lots of small yellow fruit (ping pong ball size) laying on the sand. They looked like guayabas, one of my favorite. But the leaves and tree itself didn't look as I recall a guayaba to look.

I broke one open and just touched the tip of my tongue to the flesh. It tasted sweet. But it did not taste like a guayaba. So I left it without eating any. I did carry a few with me to ask about, back at the hotel. Within 1/2 hour I had a pretty strong case of indigestion and very irritated palate.

When I showed the hotel staff what I had gotten into they were horrified! They said it was DEADLY poison! "Oh great!" I thought. "Great way to celebrate our 35th anniversary." They gave me some milk to drink and we went back to our room. I researched via Internet. There is no hospital near here, and the staff didn't mention any doctor.

The long and the short of it was I had indigestion for most of the day and almost no appetite. It felt like an overdose of habanero, minus the great flavor. I also had a sore palette until sometime the next day. But we did go hiking, etc. with no interruption. I wasn't particularly upset, once I determined that the poison wasn't such as attack the neurological system.

Here's a link, one which actually encouraged me, as the fellow actually took a couple of bites and survived. I have, however daydreamed about somehow commercializing this stuff to use on garden pests.

Mazanillo poisoning

Oh my gosh. I'm glad you're okay, George!

George, That might have been a bit more adventure than y'all were hoping for. I'm glad you're OK and Happy Anniversary to you two!!!

Dawn

I'm sorry you had to spend part of your trip being sick! SO glad it was not worse!