Dawn, like most Saturdays I went for a bike ride. It was ominous looking enough, to keep others from joining us... but Mel and I persevered. :)

Here are pictures of the clouds on our ride.

Oh, and I had a smidgen over an inch or rain in my gauge when I got home and looked.

Moni

PS, we did stop and killed to much time at Tony's, on Post and I-40. It is a really nice looking place!

Here is a link that might be useful: rain clouds

Moni,

I bet it was a beautiful morning to ride.

Love the photos!

Over an inch is simply fabulous.

See what this summer has done to us...we are getting all excited over gray skies. lol

Dawn

Yep, gray skies and that weird stuff falling from the sky!!! It made me dance... I loved it.

This is the BEST summer day so far this year.

Moni

This morning I was so excited see to western sky become so dark suddenly like alien ship invading the Norman sky, I see such dark gray skies for ages... i took few pics before it approaching us.

Finally we got 1.45" of rain!!! Now it looks like it did not rain at all. -Chandra

I am glad you guys got rain, but those clouds look scary. I took a look at the Mesonet and we were mostly green. Obviously that was a 'false-positive' because we didn't get a drop. Just not our turn yet, I guess.

Chandra, Wow! What incredibly dark skies. Usually such dark skies do scare us all, don't they? I think that today we've all lost our usual fear of them because the rain is so very welcome.

I bet the dry ground did soak up that 1.45" like a sponge. I hope it helps all the plants that have been struggling to hang on.

Carol, We have been green and yellow all afternoon and there's less the 0.2" in the rain gauge to go along with what we had during the overnight hours. It isn't much, and I would expect more from looking at the radar. Well, we are happy for every drop, regardless. The red on the radar hit Burneyville and western Love County and then went SW of us into Cooke County, TX, We still got the thunder and cool air. It almost feels cold outside right now--65 degrees on the front porch, with a nice little breeze and a stray raindrop every now and then.

I hope it is your turn next. Y'all have been far too dry for far too long.

Oh, and the winner of "first to face flooding" is Pushmataha and Pittsburg counties, including Antlers. They have had close to 4" since midnight and had a flood advisory for part of the afternoon, but it is gone now. Who can begrudge them that lovely amount of rainfall though? They were so very dry before.

Dawn

I think I am a weather nerd. I look at Intellicast, NWS, TV6 and Mesonet almost everyday. What I have noticed lately is that the Mesonet and TV6 rarely show the same thing. The Mesonet looks like we are getting rain much of the time when we are not. For my area, Tulsa Channel 6 is right much more often. Is it just me or is the Mesonet not as accurate as it was a year or so ago.

1.3 inches for me in NW OKC today!

Carol,

I have no idea what is going on. All I can say is that my forecast high from the NWS has been wrong for the last 15 months, and the hotter the weather, the more wrong it is. They'll say 99, we'll be 106. They'll say 103, we'll be 109. They'll say 106 and we'll be 112. I bet the actual forecast at our house was 6-8 degrees higher than the forecast high for most all of last summer and this summer as well. I use the point forecast for Bomar because that is where I am, but even if you use Burneyville's forecast, which is further away from us, or Marietta's which is just as far away but in a different direction, it is still wrong. It is bizarre. I used to have a lot more faith in the NWS forecast than I have now.

We now have 6 thermometers outside, each of them in full shade, 5' above the ground. We kept buying "one more" because we thought our thermometers were malfunctioning since our temperatures were so far off from the NWS forecasts and from the data reported for the Burneyville mesonet station. From talking to friends and neighbors from around Love County and often comparing real-time temperatures with them as they are occurring, I feel like it is safe to say that the problem is not the thermometers. The problem is the forecast.

You know, I don't expect their forecast to be identical to mine. But you'd think they could do better than being 3, 5 8 or 9 degrees off day after day.

With the rainfall (shrug), who knows. It is all a game of percentages, so it isn't as easy to track whether their forecast is "on" or "off". I will say that most of the time if we have an 80 or 90 or 100% chance of rain, nothing falls. If we have a 20 to 40% chance, it seems like rain falls. Why is that? Sometimes I feel like Alice in Wonderland because the weather we have just isn't the weather the NWs predicts we'll have. It drives Tim batty. He doesn't even want to hear the NWS forecast any more, as he has a lot more faith in our TV mets (for good reason).

I think the NWS does some things really well. For example, they hit it out of the ballpark many times when they forecast severe weather several dsys in advance. Clearly they see the patterns coming together and know when tornadoes and severe thunderstorms with large hail are most likely. I give them credit for that. If they tag an upcoming day, for example as a "Particularly Dangerous Situation", we know someone in that highlighted area is in trouble. I appreciate that they give us remarkable advance warning in cases like that.

With all the little daily things like forecast highs and lows, rain or not, etc., I am totally disappointed and disgusted with the last two years. It has destroyed my faith in their daily forecasts. If their models aren't able to accurately get anywhere close to the right forecast high or low, then simply give it to us as a range. Then, if they said 103-108 and we hit 112, I wouldn't be nearly as frustrated as if they had said 103 and we hit 112.9.

I hate to say this because I used to have a lot of faith in the NWS, but now their predictions just about rank with horoscopes, almanac precictions, and the BCS Standings.

Mia, Based on what we've seen today, those ugly skies have brought us some lovely rain. I've never been happier to see threatening dark clouds. At our house, where the rain was very light, even the cats sat out in the rain and let it fall on them. I guess the cats are as tired of the long, hot, dry summer as the rest of us.

Congrats on the rain. Isn't it amazing how much hope and joy little moisture gives us all?

Dawn