Yea, we went from drought removal likely to drought intensifies. I've about given up on weather and climate forecasts. Not sure if they have any idea what they're talking about any more. We've repeatedly had rain in the forecast and been missed. I'm in NE Ok and it is bad here.

Quailhunter, I kinda agree with you on the rain forecasts. The closer I watch the weather, the less faith I have in the forecasts. However, it seems to me that when they are forecasting climate-related long-term trends like drought, the models are correct more often than those that just predict rainfall or temperatures. Their fire weather forecasts also are uncannily accurate, and for that we should be grateful because it gives us a heads-up that the conditions are right for dangerous wildfires.

We have been missed a lot by the rain this year, but we always are, so I am fairly used to it. I think the rainfall at our house right now is around 6". Normal for us by the end of May probably is about 15". It is difficult to look ahead to the summer growing season with any happiness and joy when drought hangs over us like the Sword of Damocles.

I am having a hard time deciding how much more to plant because of the drought. About a third of our county now is in extreme drought, but the part I am in remains in severe drought---not that severe drought is a picnic by any means. Springtime drought isn't as hard to overcome as summertime drought, because once summertime's higher temperatures arrive, everything just dries out so much more quickly. Normally, in summertime, by the time we reach severe drought, I cannot water the garden enough to keep it producing. I can water enough to keep it alive, but productivity is so poor that it is a waste of water. So, I'm kinda dreading summer.

Dawn

I was just coming to post this (more encouraging) news :)

Aaron Tuttle: Long range outlook: Just some piddly stuff between now and the 22nd but after that a pattern change that completely opens the Gulf of Mexico wide open to allow PW (precipitable water) values to soar giving us some much needed widespread rain daily. I'm sure a few surface boundaries will be in play too, weak front and/or dryline into the last week of May so severe storms at some point during this period. We might even end up in a flooding rain type situation. That would be crazy to see considering how this year has gone thus far. Anyway, just throwing this out there for your planning purposes.

Lisa, I sure hope he is right. I looked at the QPF for the next 7 days, and it shows my garden might receive a whole 0.01" in the next 7 days. That certainly doesn't offer much hope, but we had rain last week and this week and I'm not crazy enough to think we'd actually get rain three weeks in a row in May (normally one of our wettest months).

If AT is right, then maybe the kind of rainfall that parts of south Texas have had the last few days will make it up here after the 22nd. I wouldn't ever wish flooding upon anyone, but it would be almost worth putting up with flooding if we could get some good soaking rainfall.

Looking at the US Drought Monitor, it is clear that Texas and OK, and parts of KS and NM, as well as the whole southwestern US between us and California and then into Nevada, are in a world of hurt. It is bad when you are going into summer already in severe, extreme or exceptional drought, and it is going to take a ton of rain to turn it around.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Latest Drought Monitor

A couple of long-term sources I looked at this morning have lots of rain in the plains starting Memorial Day weekend. Multiple days, heavy rains, but more north of us than actually here. We'll get our shot though.

Model predictions of good rain are sometimes wrong, but model predictions of NO rain are almost always right. So the good news is at least there is a decent chance.

We are at about 8 inches of precipitation since the trees went dormant last November. Not a problem if we get 4 or 5 inches in the next month. Otherwise a big problem.

This post was edited by scottokla on Thu, May 15, 14 at 14:29

I hope you mean Memorial Day weekend.

I refuse to wait until Labor Day for rain to fall. : )

I feel so bad for the farmers. I spent a weekend turkey hunting in Western OK a few weeks ago. So rough out there. As dry as it is here, it is so much worse there. Even if we get good rain now, the wheat crop is already a flop. Still, I hope everybody gets some rain.

I planted a few eggplants the other day and almost couldn't dig the hole deep enough in my garden.

I agree about western OK. It is heartbreaking to see how dry it is in the western areas of the state, some of which have been in drought with little to no relief since 2010.

I don't know how the farmers and ranchers have been able to hang in there and stay afloat in these conditions year after year. They need to have some good years in the mix to make up for the bad years, and nowadays good years are getting pretty scarce.

Our ground is hard like that too, and I've put off planting the back garden because of it. My son has a big gasoline-powered auger I could use to drill holes into the soil and then plant into, but I don't really see the point. We have had about 0.78 or 0.80" of rain this week. Tomorrow I'm going to venture into the back garden to see if I can break up the ground back there before it completely dries up again. It was too wet yesterday to consider rototilling. I'm trying to catch the soil when it is moist enough to rototill but not wet enough that I'd get dirt clods. Most of it is sandy-silty soil where plants grew pretty well last year in its first year as a garden plot, although heavy irrigation was required in July and August. The clay areas aren't even worth tilling and I may just put cardboard on top of them and pile on organic matter to see if it all can decompose and then be worked into the soil this winter.

The grasshopper situation here is pretty bad. I'm going to have to get serious about implementing some control methods or it won't by our garden this summer---it will belong to the grasshoppers.

Thank you, Dawn! Yes, I changed it to Memorial Day. Labor Day would be a reeeeally LONG-range forecast.

There is a line from about Tulsa down to Ada where the east side is in pretty good shape with regards to full ponds and deep soil moisture. The west side of the line is pretty bad. We live on the east side of the line and have had 10 inches this year after getting the huge rain last October that filled all of the ponds. Our farm is west of the line and there is no soil moisture at all.

You're welcome, Scott. That scared me for a minute. I was prepared to pitch an old-fashioned temper tantrum if our next good chance of rain wasn't going to be until Labor Day. I also would have really low confidence in a forecast that far out.

We haven't had as much rain as you've had at home, but we must have had more than the farm has had because not only do we have some soil moisture, we have mud. I haven't done much in the garden yesterday or today because the soil is so muddy, but it is drier this afternoon, and I think I'll get to go outside and play in the dirt all day long tomorrow. Western Love County hasn't had as much rain as we have, and when we drove through there a couple of weeks ago, I was shocked by how dry it was and by how green it wasn't.

Now that we're talking soil moisture, I realize I haven't looked at the "Available Soil Moisture" map on the Mesonet lately, but we are probably in about the best shape now that we've been in all year. I hope it lasts a while, but know that it may not.

April, May and June are usually just about our wettest months here, along with October, so it is really troubling that they are so dry. It could be worse, though, so I'm certainly grateful for every raindrop that has fallen here.

I doubt it'll be much, but I bet some of that forecast rain comes. I hope. I'm just not holding out on the "excess rain" part.

Haha, Dawn, we all know that temper fits induced by lack of rain are soo effective...about as effective as my temper fits when I was three. Well, if I had ever had one, which you know I did not, because I was a perfect three year old...

This post was edited by lisa_h on Fri, May 16, 14 at 13:26

Bon, I don't know what amount of rain would have to fall for any of us to consider it excessive at this point. I say to the rain: bring it on! The more rain the merrier. We rarely get enough in our part of the state to ever think of it as excessive.

Lisa, I am sure you were a perfect three year old. Yes, indeed. I'm pretty sure I wasn't one. My mom wanted to dress me in frilly dresses and lace, and we only had boy neighbors. So, I wore pants and t-shirts and ran with the boys and was quite the muddy, dirty tomboy. It might have been my mom having the temper tantrum, and not me because I wasn't the girly girl she wanted me to be.

One of the nice things about living in the country is that you can throw a temper tantrum in your garden and no one is there to see it, well except for all the deer, rabbits, wild turkeys, hawks, birdies, snakies, froggies, etc. Even when I am all alone in the garden, I'm never actually alone, so I do try to behave myself and keep the temper tantrums to a minimum.

I'm trying to be more 'zen' and to go with the flow. So, yesterday, when I walked into the garage and a big black snake slithered under the lawn mower, I sighed, picked up whatever it was I went in there to get and made a mental note to avoid the lawn mower for the next 40 years because there might be a snake hiding underneath it. I did not, however, have a temper tantrum. If the drought continues to worsen, we won't need to use the mower anyhow because the grass wont be growing enough to need mowing.

Dawn