Sharon,

Thank you for thinking of us down here.

It was quite a night, with wind gusting up near 60 mph, non-stop lightning flashes, thunder that just roared (as I hope that the OKC Thunder will roar tonight!) and even a little rainfall--0.85".

We did half-expect lightning would ignite a fire, but if it did, it did not happen in our fire district or the ones that adjoin ours, because our pagers never went off. (Hooray!)

The only real damage is to about 400 mid-season and late-season corn plants. One group was about 3' tall and the other was 5' tall. Right now, they're flat on the ground. I likely will try to straighten them up tomorrow morning. I feel like there's no point in attempting to do it today because Round Two is scheduled for later today and I'd be really mad if I straightened up all the corn only to have it knocked down again. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to stand it back up because it is really flat on the ground--not kinda, sorta leaning towards the ground, but flat on the ground.

While the rain was nice, and as always, greatly appreciated, the garden and I would have been happier without all that wind. Here in OK, the weather giveth and it taketh away. I'm sure hoping it didn't take away our chance at getting a good corn harvest.

We had high dew points that led to high heat index numbers yesterday and I hope the same doesn't happen today. At one point, our heat index hit 109 but we were relatively cool compared to the folks in the Gainesvillle-Muenster area, who at one time had a dewpoint of 79 (ours maxed out at 74) and a Heat Index Number of 116.

This year sure is an improvement over last year, especially in terms of higher rainfall and I sure am grateful for that.

Dawn

Down here in Durant, we had wind, lots of lightning and a yummy 2.5" of rain (at least in my back yard). My poor cucumber plants are covered in heavy mud, I hope the leaves dry off and crack up the mud a bit today. We needed the rain though. Hoping round 2 gives us some more today!

kfrinkle, I'm glad to hear y'all got so much rain. We've had plenty here in Marietta lately, but I'd noticed y'all weren't getting quite as much and had gotten pretty dry in recent weeks.

My cucumber and squash plants looked like that last week after 3.5" fell here, and most of the dirt blew off the leaves a few days later as the mud on the leaves dried. You also could hose them off if you want. I would have done that if the wind hadn't blown most of the dirt off the leaves within a couple of days.

I hope y'all get more rain in Round Two today, and that we do too. After last summer's pitifully low rainfall, I am never going to complain about summer rainfall again, and I don't care how much of it falls. I. Will. Not. Complain. Our clay soil still had cracks in some places, even after receiving over 6" of rainfall in the last couple of weeks and our big pond still was empty. I guess that dry pond bottom has been soaking up the rainfall like a sponge. I'm hoping last night's rain, or tonight's rain if it falls, might finally close up the last of the cracks and maybe even leave some water standing in the big pond. No matter how much summer rain we get here in southern OK, it almost never is enough.

Dawn

Great that you guys are getting rain!!

Dawn - sorry about your corn. Hopefully your Round Two doesn't have the wind and other craziness associated with it and you can those stalks back up soon. I'm very thankful you had no fires to contend with...maybe you won't tonight either.

I drove to Dallas 2 weeks ago...and was sad to see that down below Pauls Valley or so, everything is already so CRISPY and yellowed. We've been a little spoiled in OKC with the rain so far; I just couldn't believe how dry it was down there.

Sharon

Sharon,

Even when Tim and I drove up for the Spring Fling, we saw a lot of dry areas between Ardmore and OKC and that was at the end of April which had been relatively rainy down here.

We're starting to green up here....if over 7" of rain in the last month won't green up our area for at least a little while that would be really disturbing.

Round Two today was very light, drizzly rain--about 6 or so hours of it--that amounted to 0.45".

I was inside all day making Plum Jelly and Blueberry-Lime Jam (many jars!) but finally took a stroll out to check the garden. I just looked at it through the fence as I didn't want to walk in the muddy pathways, and noticed that 90% of the corn plants had stood themselves back up, which is great. If the others don't stand up tomorrow, I'll straighten them up. At least I hope to. I have about 100 lbs. of tomatoes destined to become salsa, pasta sauce and catsup tomorrow, so I won't get out of the kitchen until really late in the day. Maybe by then the last few stalks will have straightened up themselves.

Now we need to work on getting some more rain up there to the folks in NE OK. They've been too dry this year.

Dawn

I just saw this pic, take care Dawn and folks in that part. Although I am sad that it is not bringing the rain this side...
{{gwi:1113913}}

Do y'all see something I don't see?

I'm not expecting anything here worth worrying over. We have wind out of the east and light, thin clouds to our east and southeast but nothing that's a rainmaker.

I am in central Love County a mile or so west of I-35 in the middle of the state from east to west, though about as far south as you can go without crossing over into Texas. We are not likely to get rain from Isaac's remnants. I'd be more worried if I was 100 miles east of my present location.

I think the people who ought to be watching this thing are the ones close to the TX border in extreme SE OK (McCurtain County, maybe), in SW and western Arkansas, and in the OK counties that border Arkansas. Missouri might get rain.

I hope the rain from Isaac find's Dorothy's house in Adair County and pours rain down on her dry, parched ground. We have had 3.2" in the last five days, and Dorothy's ground needs some rain so it can catch up with ours. : )

So, let's watch and see who this impacts. My best guess is maybe Larry's area, and Dorothy's and Carol's? Maybe George's if some thunderstorms pop up?

What the remnants of Isaac are supposed to give me, according to local forecasters, is hot dry weather with high temps and low humidity. It currently is 97 degrees here with an RH of 29% so the local guys are right on the mark so far.

If Isaac moves as expected and as forecasted by the models it should be moving north/northeast away from me, not towards me. I'm not gonna say Isaac will do what they say, because tropical systems are hard to predict with regards to track, but once they come ashore and are moving as slow as he is, there usually are not many surprises.

I've linked the current forecast track. It looks to me like Isaac's remnants really want to curve over just enough to maybe go visit Carol, Dorothy and Larry. On the linked map as of 3:30 this afternoon, I am under the "M" in the words 7 AM Friday.....but Larry may be having breakfast tomorrow with Isaac's remnants.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Isaac's Current Forecast Track

Dawn, my joints usually tell me when I am going to have company like Isaac. I guess they have not seen the pictures yet, cause I feel good. We have had a lot of wind from the east and north east, even that has died down a lot.

Larry

Larry, It appears to me that you have a better chance than most of us, but you are kind of on the edge too. Their expectations have been all over the place for us, but the numbers keep going down. The track is east of where they original thought it would be. They still show a 70 percent chance for us tonight, and 100 percent tomorrow, so I am hoping they are right.

We have had some wind gusts today that have brought down some of the dead tree limbs that were broken during our storm a few weeks back. They were caught up in trees in some cases and there has been enough wind to knock them loose. We don't get a lot of wind at my house, so it seems heavy to me, but it really isn't bad compared to other parts of Oklahoma. The TV weather said our rain would start after midnight, and it's after midnight and we are still waiting. I hope I awake to lots of rain.

So, are y'all getting much of anything in terms of rain or wind?

We did eventually have a band of clouds from Isaac. Our local TV met said at 6 pm it was over Choctaw County so I checked the sky east of us periodically and by 7 pm or so, I could see it. It then moved closer pretty quickly. It was circling from the northeast to sort of the southwest and by nightfall it was pretty close to I-35. I don't think any rain fell from it, as that band was comprised of very thin and wispy clouds by the time it made it into eastern Love County. Because we were just a few miles west of that band, we could stand in the driveway and watch it move--circling down from northeast of us to just barely southwest of us. That was kinda cool.

Today we have early morning clouds and I don't think they are related to Isaac, unless these are the remains of last night's band of clouds. They are low and thin. I think it is p;ossible they had spun off so far west that Isaac just moved off and left them sitting here. No rain is expected in our county from Isaac.

As I was watching the track shifting slightly east throughout the day, I was so disappointed. I had hoped it would stay northwest a little longer so extreme northeastern OK could get some good hard rain.

Although all of us appreciate the moisture that Isaac's remnants brings far inland, my heart goes out to all the people in areas affected by Isaac. The amount of flooding is mind-boggling, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to lose everything to Isaac and to have to start over completely with virtually nothing. So far, the death toll is low in the USA, but any storm-related deaths are too many.

Dawn

My rain gauge had .67" in it at noon today. It was a very slow nice rain. I would like to have a little more, but I dont expect much.

Carol, you have been much nicer than I have been, you have sent me a nice share of your wind, I have sent you very little of my rain. I must work on my GREED.

Larry

Larry,

That's a decent amount. I thought you'd get more, but then it started veering more eastward and I started to think you might not get any.

LOL about the greed. I always feel greedy, too, when I am complaining and saying we need more rain, but I think it is all about perspective. My non-gardening friends look at me like I am crazy when I complain that enough rain hasn't fallen because to them, as long as there is enough rain to keep their lawns kind of green, they are happy. It takes a lot more rainfall to keep my flowers, herbs and veggies happy.

It seems like we get too little rain for months and months, and then for a few weeks we'll get far too much at once. Gardening here would be a little less stressful if the rain would fall at a consistent rate instead of swinging from one extreme to the other.

Dawn