We have about the same in our rain gauge as our Mesonet station is reporting----a whopping 0.30". Hoping for more today.

The big winner of the Rainfall Derby this morning is Cooke County, TX, across the Red River from my county here in OK. Parts of Cooke County received as much as 11.4" of rain overnight and I-35 is closed down in both directions near Valley View, Texas. Water rescues are underway in Cooke County, where video I saw on The Weather Channel a few minutes ago shows water up to the hoods of some pretty big SUVs. I don't remember if they said if that video was shot on I-35, on its service roads, or elsewhere. Denton County got a lot of rain too but I haven't heard how much.

Cooke County has been about as dry as us and also is in Extreme Drought, but the rain they got will help them a lot in terms of alleviating the drought. It is unfortunate that flooding follows heavy rainfall like that.

As I was typing this, Sam Champion on TWC said "Clear Creek" in Cooke County has risen 14' and is expected to rise at least 26' as the water runs off. I think he actually is referring to the Clear Fork of the Trinity River, which runs under I-35 in the general area of where the flooding is ongoing.

I was hoping for drought-busting rain, and while we aren't getting it, they sure are.

Krista, I'm glad you picked all the tomatoes you had that were breaking color. I did the same thing, although it looks like I really didn't need to get in a big hurry to get it done. I was trying to beat the rain. I pick at breaker stage every day, but I really went out of my way yesterday and picked fruit not only in the morning but then again in the late afternoon so I could get all the ones that broke color later in the day,

While it can be nice to get drought-busting rain, I think the folks in Cooke County and adjacent counties got too much. Been there, done that, and it is about as hard on the garden as too little rain.

Dawm

I am so proud they got rain too. I will call my father in law at Collinsville tx and see what he got. I am going again sun to pick tomatoes over there, mostly green for relish. I bet the reds will be watered down huh?
kim

I had 2.25 this morning, but it should be a little higher by this evening.

Oh Dawn :( I was really hoping you were going to get that rain!!

Kim, It depends on how much rain he got in Collinsville, how fast it fell (maybe it fell hard and fast and mostly ran off), etc. An inch or two won't necessarily hurt tomatoes too much in terms of watering down the flavor but 3" or more tends to really ruin the flavor. I always try to pick the fruit ahead of big forecasted rain events. When we got 3.5" in June over a two-day period, my fruit that was green at the time had a lot on concentric and radial cracking over the next week or two, which happens when the inner part of the tomato sucks up moisture faster than the skin can expand, but I only saw weather checking on a handful of fruit. The flavor was watered down, but I used a lot of those for canning and I took great care to scoop out the gel and seeds and any water with them. Cooking them down for canning also cooks out a lot of the excess water, and with some of them, I cooked them down to tomato sauce to concentrate the flavor and then froze it to use in cooking over the next year. When water severely impacts tomato flavor, I tend to use those fruit either for dehydrating or canning so that I can remove a lot of the excess water.

I-35 re-opened for maybe a half hour near Sanger, but now I'm hearing that traffic is at a standstill again so either they reopened it too soon or maybe there's a wreck or something.

A steady, light rain is falling here again, so I expect we'll end up getting nice rainfall out of this. I sure hope so. While I was hoping for a lot of rain, I'm relieved we didn't get all the rain that Sanger got. The last time we had that sort of 1-day rainfall, a house near the fire station flooded, and some folks' vehicles got washed off the roadways, mostly south of Marietta and maybe a little west of town too.

Chris just crossed the Red River headed south and reported the Red River looked to him like it had risen maybe 8' since he crossed it yesterday. Since the rain fell, Lake Ray Roberts already has risen a foot. Folks there should be thrilled after so many recent years of low lake levels.

It is such a relief to see the rain falling, especially over parts of OK and TX that have been far too dry for far too long. Maybe Wichita Falls will get enough rain to save some of the trees that are still clinging to life after 4 consecutive years of drought.

Dawn

Kim,

Wunderground is showing 2.41" for Collinsville. I'll link that page below. Widespread rain continues across the area, so I expect they'll get more.

Chris is reporting to me that 30 water rescues have occurred in the area where rain fell and that Lake Lewisville also is rising quickly. Well, quickly considering what a large lake it is.

Lisa,

Thanks for hoping for rain for us. We've been hoping about as hard as it is possible to hope. We are getting slow, steady rain now and I think we'll end up with at least an inch or two.

I wanted rain. I wanted lots of rain, but...you know, I didn't want as much as the Sanger area got.

I spent a lot of time yesterday in the garden. I yanked out the least healthy tomato plants, trimmed sick foliage off more that I originally intended to yank out. I told them (yes, I talk to my plants....doesn't everyone?) that if enough rain fell to make them put out a lot of new foliage, I'd let them stay around a bit longer. It is a precarious balancing act. I am trying to keep enough tomato plants going that we'll have great harvests all summer in terms of fresh eating, but I don't want to have so much fruit that we can't keep up with the harvest.

I'm just now starting to can pickles and peppers, so I don't need a huge tomato harvest any longer, and I have no desire to keep watering and watering and watering a bunch more tomato plants than we need. So, the plants I left will mostly have to survive on rain, if it falls. If it doesn't fall, I'll yank out a bunch more and plant something else in that spot.

Dawn

We got 0.4" west of Elk City

Another dud. I'm guessing about 1.4 for the week at the farm and .5 here at home. I won't know for sure until I get to the computer that logs the data.

That now brings the total at the farm to near 13 inches for the year. Our total for the year thus far is even less than 2011 and 2012 at this point. Not a single month has gotten to 3 inches or even to the average for that month. The grass is still green, just no moisture below 10 inches.

The next 8-14 days look mostly dry.

We got right at an inch and at our house we have received about the same YTD amount Scott has, although our Mesonet has gotten more than our house almost every time it has rained this year so their YTD total looks better than ours.

There is some light misty crap in the air but it is almost more like fog than rain so I don't think it will raise the total any.

Scott, I think all our rain and yours ended up in Texas in parts of Cooke and Denton counties that received up to 14". You should have seen the flooding. It was crazy.

I think at this point we are very slightly ahead of where we were in 2011, but not by much. It is getting depressing. I really felt like we had a great chance to get several inches, and that would have helped a lot.

Still, even though the total rainfall was disappointing, our high temperature only got up to 67 degrees here, which is incredible for mid-July. I appreciated the break from the heat and sunlight and would have been happy enough with that even if no rain fell. An inch isn't bad, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I am grateful for every drop that fell. It is hard, though, to feel oodles of joy when you look at the water rushing off into the rivers and creeks in the areas that got 14" in less than 24 hours. They needed rain just as desperately as we did, but they didn't need that much at one time.

We turned a lot more brown this week, having exhausted the moisture that fell about two weeks ago. This rain will green us up for a week or so. After that, who knows?

I'm not planning on a fall garden. It is just too hard to get one established in July and August if rainfall is pitiful....and pitiful rainfall is our area's middle name this year.

Oh Dawn, I was so wishing that you would get a really, really nice amount of rain from this system......dang, girl! We were very fortunate and our 3 rain gauges showed 2.25", 2.70" and 2.80". Neighbor down the road called and said he had 2.25". So, I'm marking down 2.70" - I like that number. Bar ditches were running full this morning and for a change I can see water in the playa lake on the back east side of the section.

I agree that the cooler temperature has been just wonderful. We got up 69 or 70F and it felt soooo good.

Okay Dawn and Scott, here's to a really good amount of rain for the two of you and others who need it. We do feel very blessed for what we received.

Mary

I was at the hospital in Ft. Smith today, it seemed cold in there and we ran the heater all the way home even though the temp was only 62. I checked the rain gauge a while ago and we have had 1/2" of very slow rain.

We have been very fortunate here. I was surprised at how little many areas received. It was spotty around here. From Sunday evening till noon today I received just over 2.5 inches. The garden is looking better already. I know anyone who has been on these forums the last 4-5 years knows I've been in the doughnut hole that the rains have skipped. This year so far it seems if it rains we at least get some. This makes our 4th rain of over an inch this year and we have had two that have been .9 or more. So blessed for what we have received. Hopefully we will continue to see moisture through August and Sept. After what fell this morning. I'm about two tenths under 11 inches for the year. Hopefully we will see our highest yearly total since 2008 this year. Just need two more inches to be there.

Mary, I am so glad you got some good rainfall. When I heard your general area had lots of rain, I was hoping it hadn't missed your place.

It just isn't our year for consistent rainfall here. Like Scott, we have had below-average rainfall every month this year, although I think June came close to being average. I don't care what the 5-day or 7-day QPF forecasts for us, it is wrong (and often very much so) about 80% of the time. Tim and I have noticed that when it forecasts a lot of rain for us, we almost never get anything close to the amount predicted....but sometimes when it forecasts almost nothing for us, we get a lot. So, obviously, we don't put much faith in it.

When I woke up yesterday morning and checked the weather map first thing and saw the flood warnings about 20 miles south of us in Texas, I immediately knew we weren't going to get the rain because it all went there. Really, for the previous 2 days I saw rain falling south of us in Texas and got that all-too-familiar "uh oh, it skipped over us" feeling, which is a common thing this year....rain to our north and rain to our south and little left over for us. Maybe 2015 will be better.

Jay, It is about time y'all had a good rainfall year there and I feel pretty confident you'll get that 2" and more. Of course, after we had heavy rainfall last fall, I was confident that the winter of 2013-14 and spring of 2014 would be good to us, and I was 100 % wrong about that, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Dawn

Dudes and Dudettes!!!!!!!!
Holy Moly!!! I have a 5 inch rain gauge, finally went to ck today, and there signs of OVERFLOWING!!!!!! Unbelievable!

Sure, rub it in!

I'm happy for you guys that got enough to saturate your soil profile and fill your ponds.

luvabasil, That's terrific.

Scott and I will just have to keep suffering (though, lol, not in silence) until our areas start getting enough rain to make an actual difference.

Those of you who did get great rainfall---remember to brace yourselves and prepare for insane heat index numbers when the heat returns in a day or two, and prepare for the mosquito battle. I expect the West Nile Virus cases in OK will be on the increase, especially in areas that got tons of rain. As much as we all love getting rain in the summertime, it does come with a price.

Did ya'll play in the mud? I did. Lifted the planter. Carrots were too short. The planter was sinking into the ground. Lifting it revealed the planter to be less than half full in some places.

The mesonet peeps in Perkins didn't keep track. Our rain barrels were over flowing. The ground is saturated in ideal scenarios but only the top soil is soaked in other areas and in mulched gardens.

It rained for days. I can't recall the last time it rained for days.

I didn't want to play in the mud. Well, I wanted to, but what I needed was to be inside getting caught up on the canning, so that is where I am and where I have been.

What do you mean the Perkins mesonet peeps didn't keep track? There's not necessarily any peeps involved unless they are coming out to the station to do maintenance because the stations are automated. Some times you will see during a period of rainfall that they are not reporting, but usually that has more to do with their wireless transmissions being down. Once they are up and running again, the correct rainfall totals will update. Ours seems like it goes offline every time it rains.

Your actual rainfall may or may not match that recorded at Perkins. Ours almost never matches Burneyville's nor does it usually match the rainfall recorded by our county Co-operative Observer. Most of the time, though, our rainfall is not too far off from what our co-op observer records since he's just a couple of miles from us as the crow flies. I cannot even get the same rainfall totals from two gauges on our property, but they usually are in the same ballpark.

The Perkins total as recorded there in that location is a little over 4" in the last 5 days, and that sounds pretty nice to me. I always look at the radar-indicated rainfall map totals too, so I can see if they show totals similar to what we have received at our house.

Despite only a little rainfall here, we are enjoying the cool, cloudy, misty, foggy days. It has been a long time since July weather felt this pleasant. I'm dreading how hot it will feel when we no longer have the clouds and the nice, rain-cooled air. It is going to be such a disappointment when it is insanely hot again.

Roger that. It shows, now. Yep. Quite a bit! I'm really glad you got something out of this batch of storms. We took a drive today and saw the rolling green hills. Very nice for Oklahoma.

It'll be hot real fast, I'm sure.

Our total near Colbert for last weeks cold spell was almost 2 inches. Maybe 1.8". Got none the other night when we had a 60% chance. Supposedly, rain next week. But, it almost never happens when they predict it. However, this summer is so rare. Our high last week was 66 degrees, pretty much impossible in July down here near TX border in Se OK. I was astounded. Saw some 77 degree dew points lately, though not today.

One day last week our high was 67 and our low was 62 and we got an inch of rain at our house, although our county's mesonet station at Burneyville got about 1.3". It probably was the same day your high was 66. I don't remember the last time, if ever, we had a high in mid-July of 67 degrees. It was so nice---not just rainy but also misty and foggy and pleasantly cool. We still remain in Extreme Drought in most of Love County (a small part of our county's SW corner moved back to Severe Drought on this week's Drought Monitor map), but at least we are getting enough rain a couple of days each month to keep us from progressing to Exceptional Drought, so at least there's that.

With the way the cool fronts have been rolling through periodically, summer hasn't seemed as miserable as usual, even though we've been really dry overall. The heat this week, though, is making up for those lovely cool days.

Well, I am one of the oddballs who LIKES it hot, the hotter the better. So., today, for example, was out painting (the surface was in the shade, I was not), and, really, noon-6PM is when I am generally outside, I just love the heat, no matter how hot. Used to jog in it, but, cannot do so any more due to back. We still go walking during those times though. I *hated* the cold last week!

Just got home. rain total for July 13 through July 26 - 1.6 inches.

My yard survived. :)

Friend got all the lovely peaches I didn't pick prior and hauled with me... and I should have hung a sheet or something under my grapes, to harvest raisins... LOL, all my grapes were laying dehydrated on my patio.

Lesson learned... they can ripen 3 weeks early. ;)

Moni

Moni, Well, see there? Now you are a raisin farmer. I'm surprised the birds didn't eat them all while you were away.

Welcome back to hot Oklahoma. At least we are about to cool down again for a few days.

Dawn

Welcome home. Condolences on the grapes. I bet they would have been very tasty. :D

bon