Wolflover, So do y'all still live the same location, or did you move after that? Randy, Congratulations to your daughter on her outstanding performance this past weekend! AND congratulations to the parents who are nurturing her talent! I was hoping you'd report back to us on how she did on Saturday! Ouch! I hate to see a tree that size brought down by the weather. Especially since Shumard is one of my faves. I have learned to fear straight line winds after seeing the damage they can do!!! The worst winds I can think of that we have been hit with since moving here in 1999 were in the 60 to 80 m.p.h. range. Try walking in wind that is blowing that hard! One night the wind hit our house so suddenly and so hard that it felt like a truck had hit the house! Woke us right up. I know it was in the springtime, because we had to get up in the middle of the night and move all the garden transplants from the screened-in porch to the house, as the temps. dropped rapidly. The second time it happened, we had a derecho expected, according to the weather guy on t.v., who was right for once. At about the time we were expecting it, we went outside and walked down the driveway to the street, so there wouldn't be any trees to block our view. It was so strange. Everything was deadly still and quiet...and then here it came. You could hear/see it coming. Within a few seconds the far-away howl of the wind and the intense rustling of the trees hit us. It was amazing. I guess we've had derechos since, but that was our first, and was so dramatic. That wind came rushing down to us and past us like a freight train. I had never heard of derecho winds until we moved to Oklahoma, and I lived my whole life in the Fort Worth area, so its not like I lived in a place that didn't have severe weather. Yes, it is raining VERY LIGHTLY here and I am so glad!! We need it desperately, and they say it will rain lightly most of the day. I checked the rain gauge just now and it appears that we have received a whole 3 or 4 one-hundredths of an inch. Isn't that pathetic? I don't know when we last had a good rain at our house. All we're getting this year is light, drizzly stuff that doesn't amount to much. But maybe if it rains all day long, we'll end up with a tenth of an inch or two. I feel like we live in a bizarre Bermuda-triangle area when it comes to the weather! Dawn

Sheri, During the last week I have begun watering my garden heavily because at this point it is either water heavily or close the gate and walk away and let it all die. For the last 6 days, I have watered every other day for up to 2 to 4 hours each time. My soil remains bone dry. If you go into the garden an hour or two after I water, you can stick your finger into the soil and it is moist, though certainly not wet. Eight or ten hours later, it is bone dry. The next day is it dry and baked hard, even under mulch and you can't pull the weeds. This is in raised beds. Obviously the pathways and grade level beds are even worse. It is not uncommon for our clay soil to shrink/contract and crack in hot weather. However, this is the first year ever that I have had cracks in the ground IN THE GARDEN where I am watering every other day. So, if watering every other day and mulching can't prevent the ground from having 1" wide cracks in it, what will? I am rapidly giving up on my tomatoes because the spider mite population is exploding. I am about to the point where I can't see the point in watering the tomatoes any more because the spider mites are so heavy on the plants, the stink bugs are hurting the fruit and there is no rain relief in sight. Yesterday I was in the yard when the water company guys pulled up down alongside the road to read the water meter and I remember thinking "Uh oh, a heart-attack-inducing water bill is going to arrive next week." However, I did pick about 60 nice tomatoes last night, with about half of them being pretty large ones from varieties like JD's Special C-Tex, Indian Stripe, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Gary O Sena and the other half being from Goliath, Early Goliath, Heidi and Cluster Goliath. Sixty tomatoes from 22 plants isn't bad and most of the plants have several green tomatoes still on them, and I need to check the other tomatoes this morning and pick fruit, including cherries. I already picked squash while outside turning on the water. When spider mite levels get this high (even some of our bermuda grass has the stippling typical of spider mites), if you leave heavily-infested plants in the ground, the mites begin to spread from the tomato plants to everything else. So, I think it likely I'll soon begin removing the most heavily-infested tomato plants in the hopes I can save the rest of the garden. So far, the mites are mostly on bush beans, which are winding down production anyway, and on the tomato plants. I don't want them to spread to my squash, peppers, melons, southern peas, okra etc. You just know it is going to 'hurt' to start yanking out tomato plants. Normally, my container plants are my fall-back plants if the ones in the garden are declining, but all my container grown plants had mites first, so I'm yanking them. So, I think it is possible your soil is staying far too dry, but I also think it may be impossible to water it "enough" unless you have a bottomless well and don't have to pay for municipal water. I have been watching the rapid increase in my county's Keetch Byram Drought Index, a fire index used to convey how much moisture is in the soil. For firefighters, it provides insight into how intensely fires will burn because at a certain point the soil is so dry that duff/humus layers burn and even roots burn underground. We had a lot of trouble with underground roots burning during the 2005-06 fire season. After watching the KBDI for years and comparing its numbers to what I see personally in our garden, I know that it isn't worth my while to try to keep tomatoes alive in our specific soil if the KBDI is at or above 500. The last time I checked it a day or two ago, it was at 467. I know that the "Decision Day" is coming soon and so I need to be making plans for what varieties of southern peas I'll use to replace the tomato plants. I don't think I'll take out all the plants at once, but rather will start by yanking those with no fruit, then those that are most heavily infested with mites or whatever, and eventually they'll all be gone. I might try to keep a row or two of bite-sized tomato plants going. It just depends on how hard they're being hit by the mites and stink bugs. Usually in a drought year, I stop watering the garden in early July, but have stopped in mid-June once or twice. In 2008, some lifelong gardeners who live near us stopped watering their garden about a week after I did, and they told me it was the first time they'd ever "given up" and stopped watering. It just got to the point that it didn't make sense economically and also wasn't making enough of an impact to justify spending the money on the water. I'd say that in our neck of the woods, most folks are about at that point now. I've already been watching some gardens wit soil that's not nearly as 'improved' as mine, and either they've already stopped watering or the watering doesn't appear to be helping at all. A few folks that often have gardens that are a half-acre or an acre or larger planted cool-season crops and then had such poor results that they didn't even plant warm-season crops. The weather is always a cruel taskmaster here, and this year it is so much worse than usual. I don't think my garden is about 'done' but I think my tomatoes are. Loretta, The news out of Medicine Park this morning isn't good, is it? The last report I saw says at least 5000 acres burned and about 15 homes destoyed. They have roughly 25 fire departments onscene and should get more help today from regional fire managers, Forest Service personnel, and maby air support from tanker choppers or planes that can drop water laced with fire retardent. I hope they can stop this fire before it destroys any more structures, and let's not even thing about all the wildlife displaced when their habitat burns. We have religiously removed all cedar trees within 100 yards of our house because when they are burning they can literally 'explode' and send burning sap flying through the air. Wherever that sap lands, it starts new fires. However, our next door neigbors have tons of cedars on their acreage, and some of those are only 10-15 feet from our southern property line. There's nothing we can do about those. I was looking at our unirrigated aceage yesterday and everything is dead or dormant out back of the house, which is west of the house. Down along the road east of the house, the only real green remaining is the Johnson grass and sumac in the bar ditch. How sad is that? I hadn't been watering the yard around the house, but because of the prospect of wildfires, I've started doing that, so we have a little bit of green around the house. Not a lot, but a little. You can easily tell what has been watered and what hasn't because of the sharp difference in color. The good thing about drought is you don't have to spend a lot of time mowing, because there isn't much to mow. Dawn

That is pretty amazing! Were no stranger to tornadoes here in the DC area, as we usually have a few. Ive actually SEEN two in real life here, and one way down in central VA. One of the ones I saw here passed about 2,000 feet from where I lived on the 14th floor. I watched the whole thing and saw the damage occuring. It was an EF0 when it passed us, and lifted and touched down a few times in Northern VA, Crossing interstate 395 twice and touching down next to the Pentagon, and passed the Washington Monument just above the ground. As it moved NE is turned into a monster EF4 and killed several people in College Park MD. THis was back in 2001 or 2002 I think. We have had a few EF4s here, but most are EF0 or 1s. We got hit be severe weather several times this summer, and my neighborhood got the worst storm of the summer. We took a direct hit. It was a microburst, with winds around 110MPH. IT was as was described here... a wall of rain and everything turned white like blowing snow. It ripped up around 1000 trees in our neighborhood, partially ripped off roofs, blew off several Chimneys, destroyed several large signs for businesses, blew out several large windows including that of our post office, ripped shingles and siding off of most houses including ours, bent METAL LIGHT POLES at a 90 degree angle, crushed about 150 cars, and killed 1 person. You name it it happened and people were finding property blown several blocks away. Many of my friends here took extensive damage. It literally looked like a BOMB had gone off here, and it sounded like a freight train when it went through. It only lasted about 5 minutes or so, and the gusts to 110 was only about 30 seconds, but man it was insane. This was easily a quarter century storm. I saw the PURPLE coming right for me on the radar, and we were under a severe warning for damaging winds of 80+. no one was expecting the 110+ MPH winds tho. I was outside trying my best to secure things, take down the umbrella, pile up the chairs, take the glass out of the coffee table, bring in the cushions.. etc. I heard the first gust coming and it sounded like a train coming. I could see debris and dust in the air about 30 seconds before hit hit. It was probably about 65 MPH. It was a dry gust before the rains. Then the rains started and each subsequent gust was stronger and stronger until the big one came. I would have gone in the basement but the only way in there is to go outside so I was stuck on the ground floor. I moved to the side of the house(front) that was not facing the winds and could see peices of siding and roof shingles and large tree branches flying through the air. The house shook like an earthquake and creaked. I was pretty damn scared because you couldnt see much. Fortunately the sudden wind direction change never came, and after 5 minutes of hell, it was over. No power, sirens going off all over, EVERY street blocked. Could not drive anywhere. It blew all fo my plants flat over, as well as all the furniture, and picked up a 200 pound shed and tossed it 30 feet like a toy. The yard was filled with 20+ foot branches but fortunately no entire trees came down right near me. Everywhere else was a different story. Every other house had a tree on it. The official wind gust recorded at National Airport 1 mile away was 74MPH, however they were not in the direct path of the microburst. The winds were estimated at about 105-115. I have been through a CAT 2 hurricane before, and this was IDENTICAL to what I experienced in that. Glad to hear you took no damage. Some how, none of our furniture nor plants got damaged. the only thing damaged was a couple of clay pots which were lifted and thrown. The plants (Bananas) in them were fine. The only other damage was some siding and shingles ripped off the roof, but that was it. We got VERY lucky because many right around us within 20 blocks got extensive damage. There are sections of our neighborhood now that look completely different. Where once the trees and yards were filled with 100 year old trees, there are very few left standing and it is very "open" looking now. Thanks for the story and sharing this with us. Its been a pretty violent summer for lots of people in lots of different places for sure.

Oak.... VERY interesting comment on the "Dew"! It reminded me of growing-up on the farm, and waiting for the dew to go away for swathing, combining, etc. At least the days are shorter now, so cooling at night gets more of a foothold! To the rest here- Yes...I know Man does dumb, polluting things to the environment. People & Industries who blatantly do it should be strung up! (believe it or no...I even recycle toilet-paper tubes, and lots of various plastics!! I've been known to pick up a plastic water-bottle on the street and recycle it!) Pesky- I like your recent post! Paraphrasing...."Climate change over millenia" HUGE point there!! But since that viewpoint doesn't distill into dramatic evening-news soundbites, I feel it doesn't get enough study. Mots people can't comprehend the massive shifts in climate that have happened in the mists of time. But headlines like...."Sea temps have risen .5 degrees.....!!!!" get lots of play. Well Duhhhhh! * IT HAPPENS ANYWAY....The eons-old La-Nina, & El-Nino effects on climate and rainfall. * The massive deep-well undersea currents that circle the globe go thru cycles too, which in turn affect climate. * I'm not ignorant. I learned long ago NOT to fall into "trending" science subjects, and leaping to conclusions. Faron PS...I read this somewhere long ago... (ancient Chinese proverb maybe?!?!? LOL) "If the lie is big enough, everyone will believe it..."