Dorothy,

I've been looking at the storm reports out of northeastern and eastern OK this morning, and it is sad to see such tremendous damage. The rainfall totals, though, look great in many areas and the rain certainly was needed. All that tree damage is going to make it hard for the power companies to restore electricity as quickly as people would like. My heart goes out to everyone who will be suffering in very hot and humid weather the next few days without electric power.

It looks like Tahlequah got a lot of rain too--I hope the rain fell hard at George's house and maybe drowned a bunch of grasshoppes.

We mowed earlier this week because of last week's rainfall, and now I expect we'll have to mow next week too. It is nice and green here from the roughly 1-1.5" of rain that fell in our county last week, and now we're getting more this morning....not lots of rain like y'all got, but any rain in July is so nice to see. It had been a few weeks since mowing produced enough grass clippings to put a lot of mulch on the garden, so I mulched like crazy this week and covered about half the back garden with a new layer of mulch. Maybe next week I can mulch the other half.

The rain here is light so at least it will soak in instead of running off. I'd love to get heavy rain like y'all got, but it seldom falls that hard here in summer, so we'll just be glad for whatever little bits of rain we get. Last week it took 3 or 4 days of rain just to accumulate about 1.3" or 1.4" at our house. I cannot imagine getting 4 or 5" in one day in the summer.

I bet when the clouds and rain go away, the parts of the state that got rainfall are going to be hot and steamy just like yesterday. Our dewpoint here was 75 yesterday and our heat index ran roughly 10 degrees higher than our actual air temperature so it was like a sauna. Now, I wish the rain would hurry up and go away so I can go outside and harvest in the rain-cooled air.

I was going to do a lot of harvesting early this morning and then spend the rest of the day canning, but those plans had to be delayed because of the rain. I contemplated taking an umbrella out to the garden and harvesting in the rain, but there was lightning while I was out feeding and watering the chickens, so I changed my mind about staying out there any longer than I absolutely had to.

Dawn

I had about an inch and a 1/4 I think. I was a little surprised to hear the thunder in the middle of the night, I didn't really think it was going to make it to us.

I hadn't heard the reports about the damage up by Tulsa. I know they were needing rain though.

It did get pretty wild last night, i only have leaves everywhere and a few small branches down, but there were some very very high winds coming straight from the west between 11 and mifnight. Skiatook got hit really hard with roofs being torn off, lots of building damage. Broken Arrow, Jenks, midtown Tulsa have a lot of uprooted old big trees.

My guess was between 70-80 mile an hour winds went through here, judging by the way the trees were bending and my heavy patio furniture scooting all the way from one end of the porch to the other like a toothpick. And thats a good 50 feet.

I knew it was going to be bad when we were at 100 yesterday with a heat index of close to 110 and the futurecast was predicting a cool down for the next week or so. I think today will be 90 and Friday 77, then in the 80's for the next several days, but that can always change. Even with it "only" being 90 today, i expect it to be very very muggy and intolerable by late afternoon.

I hope PSO can get electric restored soon. Mine is on, but it did keep going on amd off last night for a while, i do have a backup generator so even if it went out, i would at least have AC.

Im happy there were no reports of any injuries, that is one good thing.

Emma

I believe Tahlequah airport reported 5.3 inches and the county road crew barn, closer to my home, reported over 7". It sure was a wild night! I kept having to get up to check on animals or the radar and communicate with my daughter who works nights. When I got up this morning (slept in until almost 3:30) it was still raining hard, but without the lightening. I didn't try to vacuum grasshoppers this morning. Will have to look at rain gauge later today or this evening.

I did see a lot of downed trees on the way to work today. The building in which I work, at NSU, sustained flooding worse than I have ever seen.

George

I didn't look at the weather last evening, but at least knew some of y'all might get rain, and there was a chance of severe for northern OK. At a little after 1 a.m., I looked at the radar and there was a severe thunderstorm watch, some thunderstorm warnings, tornado warnings, and flash flood watches and warnings, I think, all over NE OK and part of SE OK and I was asking "What? How Did that happen?"

Then I looked at my weather and it was 84 degrees here even at that late hour and we still had almost no chance of rain. Less than three hours later the weather radio woke us up to tell us we had a severe thunderstorm warning, though that storm missed us. I was excited, though, at the prospect of any rainfall whatsoever, and for some of y'all , it was for a lot of rain.

George, I bet it is a mess cleaning up from that flooding. I hope all the grasshoppers drowned and floated away, or at least floated into a pile so you can scoop them up and feed them to the poultry.

Y'all know, this cool down and rain sets up everyone's gardens perfectly for fall planting! It is so much better, in terms of moisture, than it has been the last couple of years even though significant areas of OK still remain in drought.

I ran out to the garden after the rain was well south of us and picked cucumbers and peppers. It was only 77 degrees at the time and felt great, but now it is in the mid-80s and getting steamy and warm. I kind of dread what sort of heat indexes we're likely to see, but that's what happens when we get summer rainfall. I have a lot of tomatoes and pole beans with blooms. Maybe those blooms will produce something other than blossom drop during this cool spell.

Down here on our news, we're hearing that some parts of NE OK may be without power for several days, depending on how long it takes to get all the downed trees off the power lines, etc.

The forecast looks great for a lot more rain, so y'all brace yourselves. I'll link the 5-day QPF, which forecasts the rainfall totals for today through the end of Sunday.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Daughter posted pics of the damage in her yard. Lost several BIG limbs off their old elm trees. And another tree, standing dead in a neighbor's yard for 3 years, took out their electric line and two young peach trees. A mess. A neice in Tulsa also had a large limb come out of a tree. It was a tree that was slated to be removed as it was mostly dead. At least nothing fell on cars or houses at their places.

Larry I've been going to ask are you the one who sent the okra seeds to Carol to send to me a few years ago? Cowhorn and Emerald Velvet I think. Jay

Jay, I did send Cowhorn and maybe something else, I have slept since then. I had tried Cowhorn I bought at the co-op in Mena AR, It got too tall and a problem to pick. I have not tried to grow it since then. My tallest stalk was 14'5" that fall when I puller the plants. Okra makes me itch, so you can see why I did not like it. The plants produced well for me and the taste was good. I know now that one of my problems was giving it too much food and water. All the other okra I have grow was shorter and much easier to harvest.

Larry