Bumping this down to get it out of the way. I think that by now, we all know tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are popping up in much of the state. Follow current watches and warnings on more recent threads.

Hank, I do remember the heat wave of 1980 although I was living in Texas at the time. It was the worst summer ever and I know that I will never forget it. I was in college and working full-time, and I had a car with NO air conditioner. (That was the absolute last car I ever bought without an air conditioner!) My dad had a garden that year, as always, and all I remember about it is that he had a HUGE crop of the biggest, tastiest tomatoes we'd ever produced until the red spider mites got the plants in early August. In Fort Worth we went 69 days between June 23 and September 6 with high temperatures over 100 degrees, a record which stands to this day. We also recorded the all-time highest temperature ever officially recorded in the D-FW area on June 26 and June 27---113 degrees. That same year the second highest temperature ever recorded in Texas was recorded in Wichita Falls--119 degrees. In Oklahoma City, y'all had 50 days of triple digit high temperatures and recorded OKC's all-time high temp of 110 degrees--the hottest day on record outside of the Dust Bowl days. The Heat Wave of June-Sept. 1980 did an estimated $20 billion in damages/costs to agriculture and related industries. In addition, an estimated 10,000 deaths during that time-frame were classified as heat-related deaths including those caused by heat-related stress. I worked for an international airline and I remember that people would walk off the air-conditioned aircraft into the UNAIRCONDITIONED jetways, which were said to be in excess of 140 degrees, and they would collapse right there in the jetway. It happened over and over again. We sure kept the police officers, paramedics and firefighters busy that summer with all the medical calls. I also remember that you just couldn't seem to cool off, no matter what you did, because the nights were so incredibly warm too. I have been thinking along the same lines as you that we ought to have good gardening weather next year. For as long as I can remember, we have often had several hot and dry years in a row, but I don't ever remember having two excessively wet years in a row.....well, maybe in the late 1960s, but I was a kid then, so am not sure the memory is accurate. Dawn

Thanks, Rhizo! I sometimes feel like the King of Siam's kids who think snow is a made up thing in books (though I have seen glaciated snow in the forest, and actual glaciers). I read the posts y'all make about it and really don't understand what they mean. I just know it's dangerous and cold, so I'm glad when everybody reports in safe. I'm in Southern California, a few miles inland. We get hail every few years (which sometimes gets misidentified as snow by people who've never seen tiny hail), but not snow or any other non-rain/hail precipitation. There are mountains not that far away where it does snow, but not when I'm there (I was even in Germany in December but no snow). The closest I've been is high dessert where there were a few passing flakes. Few as in, oh, look, there's one!

Bowl emptier could be a raccoon. For the first time in daylight, I saw one about noon yesterday. Large, walking along the perimeter wooden fence until the neighbor's yard. I figured he was going for a drink in her many ground bird baths... but she was busy scrubbing them out. About 3 pm he appeared at one of my table birdbath dishes, standing with his hind legs up on the tree trunk behind, and his paws on the table... I think he was familiar with this dish! (And then he spent a long time nearby digging in the leaves for uneaten birdseed thrown earlier.) I had suspected raccoons were pursuing water in my yard at night, from the overturned containers. Like you said, DG, we are in the midst of a SCORCHER! Thankfully the alligators don't need to hunt for water!