Wooh hooo!!! but first, lets us an umbrella, or rain jacket...
:)

I have rain here... how about you?

Moni, in OKC, near 16th and Villa

POURING at May and Hefner OKC! So I opened all the windows to enjoy the sound!

I just came through May & Hefner. Not too bad but really flooded at May & Britton and down at Grand. It's great to get rain but too much came down too quickly and washed down the drain. I'm glad we got some but wish it would have been a little slower and soaked in to the ground.

I was watching TV last night when I heard thunder!! I was so excited I had to go outside in my jammies and just listen to it!

I am hoping we are not missed today like they say we may be.

bring it on!!

My rain gauge says I got 2.5 inches!!! I spread some grass seed yesterday, hopefully I will see some green stuff soon!

Gene, I didn't realize you lived around the Village! There are a number of us around that area.

Lisa

Lisa, we show 2.5 inches as well. Wheee! You may have to go out and rake your grass seed back out, it may have all floated to the edges of the bare patches (if it's not on its way to the Oklahoma River.)

YIPPee - I don't have to water this morning! Lots of things are showing off their colors today because they are soooooo happy to get wet!

Lisa, I hope your grass seed didn't scatter from your block to the next, lol!

BTW, I have a really nice pot of False Nettle with your name on it!

Susan

Y'all remember this---the mud boots have been sitting there on the floor, the shelf, etc. for a really long time. So, before you put them on, turn them over and shake them well so any spiders or scorpions hiding in the toes of the boots will fall out before you stick your foot in there. Never trust that an empty pair of mud boots is totally empty at the end of a long hot summer.

Glad so many have had good rain, and hoping a good heavy rain finds Dorothy's house today!

Dawn

OH, Susan, THANK YOU!! I'll drop by this week. My butterflies were just ecstatic yesterday. I pulled into my yard and they were playing tag all through the yard. I spied at least one gulf frit and a couple others.

I finally have a small stand of asclepias and some lantana. The butterflies are loving it. I hoping to get a few monarchs this year.

Lisa

We only had 0.20" of yesterday, which was pretty much in line with what the QPF forecasted for us.

This afternoon a little squall line blew up. We had lots of thunder, lightning, wind and locally heavy rain. Power flickered out a few times, lost the internet and satellite TV, etc. I understand a tree or two is down in town, some roads were flooded for a few minutes.

The good news is that at our house 2.3" fell in about an hour or maybe an hour and a quarter. That gives us 2.5" for the weekend, far surpassing what the QPF had predicted for us. Our yard is an ocean right now, and very, very light rain is still falling.

I hope this rain is headed straight to Dorothy's place.

Dawn

We were a little less fortunate than most, but still got near an inch at the farm and a little more at home.

Scott; was wondering if you got any at all. The rain, thunderstorms and lightning is exciting but I'm disheartened for the rest of the state and much of the country.

Dawn; Yours being one of them. Thanks for that tip!! I didn't make it out to the garden this morning and was about to. Thought I'd stop by and see all the happy posts. I'll be sure to shake them out good.

It rained here off and on (mostly on) for a good solid 5 hours into the wee hours. Mesonet for Perkins claims 2-3/4" rainfall. We most likely got 3 good inches.

Our light rain has finally stopped falling. We ended up with 2.5" here to go with yesterday's 0.2" for a total of 2.7". That is our largest 2-day rainfall in months. Because we are pretty much at average year-to-date rainfall already, I think that on the next U. S. Drought Monitor we'll likely drop to a lower drought category again this week. I think that would be "Abnormally Dry", and we aren't far from "normal" either.

Scott, I was hoping you had gotten more. We started out so sunny and pretty here that I figured that Saturday's 0.2" might be all we got When the sky started clouding up and darkening to our west, I just ignored it. Once the thunder started, I brought the dogs and cats inside, and told the chickens they couldn't free-range today. Then the rain fell. What a relief! I have no idea if any of the cracks in the ground will close up or if the ponds (whose bottoms are badly cracked) will hold water, but I expect the grass will green up a lot, the fire ants will pop up out of the ground, and the mosquitoes will begin hatching at much higher numbers.

I bet it it going to be hot and muggy here the next couple of days.

Bon, We have had a huge number of venomous spiders in southern OK this year---black widows and brown recluses are just everywhere. I always check my mud boots before I put them on, but this year it seems more important than ever.

I'm glad you got such good rain. I had been getting the garden cleaned up, cleared out and converted from summer gardening to fall gardening. Now, with this much rain, it will be too wet to work in it for the rest of the week, so I'll have to focus on other tasks. I'm not complaining, though, as we really needed the rain.

Most of our county did not get nearly as much rain as we got. Initially, from watching the radar I thought the rain might miss up by going north of us as it went from our southwest to the northeast. Once the rain started falling, it was raining cats and dogs for a while there. It was wonderful, except for the wind gusts and lightning strikes.

I was just outside a minute ago checking the rain gauge and the frogs are so happy that they are completely out of the lily pond and hopping all over the backyard, which is just one big puddle anyway. The bullfrogs are croaking and tons of birds are singing. It feels like a typical autumn evening out there, and in fact, like an autumn evening after a nice rain shower. Sadly, it probably will feel like a typical hot and humid summer day tomorrow. Can't win them all.

Dawn

1.1 at the farm and about 1.5 to 1.8 at the house. I don't trust the house gage. It said almost 2 inches but likely overestimates a bit.

I was hoping for more at the farm, but this will keep us for a couple more weeks as the pecans fill out. About 10 to 15 miles to the north got around 3 inches so the creek that comes from that area should have some flow again.

The mesonet has what appears to be a good estimate of rainfall. They also have a great site for mobile phone users that I recommend.

Mesonet says Norman got 1.67 inches. My home gauge says 1.75. I'm not splitting hairs. I'm GRATEFUL! Even my pot of chocolate mint that I thought was long dead has come back to life!!!

Timely reminder about the shoes, Dawn. My red garden shoes have been on the front porch for months as they weren't needed so I had to dig out a different pair yesterday when I started the Great Tomatoe Plant Masacre.

But we should all be careful of them EVERYWHERE. The other morning while doing my hair before work, I spied some strange brownish blonde hair coming out of the back of my hairbrush (I'm a auburn redhead). It's one of those open styles of brush and it was stuck handle-down in my basket on the bathroom vanity. After closer inspection, those weird "hairs" were attached to a body....of a brown recluse. I drowned it in hairspray (handy bug-spray!) until it was not able to move before I scooped it up and deposited it into our septic system.

That would have TOTALLY freaked me OUT if I'd just blindly reached and had that thing crawl on my hand!!! Everyone just be "insect aware"!

Paula

I ended up with 2.5 inches of rain. Really glad for it. State Fair starts in a couple weeks, traditionally it rains and cools off at that time, but not always.

Scott,

I like the radar-indicated rainfall on the OK Mesonet map and think it is fairly accurate. I showed Tim the tiny spot of yellow in Love County on today's rainfall map just a few minutes ago and said "see there, that's us..the yellow means 2" up to 2.5" at which time it changes to golden-brown". I won't say it is entirely accurate because we have reached 2.5" since midnight and it didn't turn to the golden-brown, but at least it is in the right ballpark.

I have no idea why we lucked into such a high rainfall total. It certainly wasn't forecast for us to get that much, but we'll take it.

I was hoping you had a bit more rain at the farm, but any rain is good. Once the drought breaks, we often get fairly regular rainfall every week or two so maybe now that rain has begun falling again, you'll get it often enough for the pecans to fill out.

Paula, That's fantastic rainfall and should make a huge difference to your plants.

I am glad you saw the spider while it still was in your brush and before it was running around in your hair. It is important to be insect-aware. We seem to have some of them in such huge numbers this year. I hope this rain washed those spider mites right off my plants.

Gene, That's wonderful rainfall. I'm further south than you and we often don't cool down until October. This cool spell has been nice, but I don't think it is our real cool-down. Still, I'm grateful we've had a few cooler days and some rainfall.

I want an autumn like we had in....hmmm...I am pretty sure it was 2004. Although we had a few really cool nights, we didn't have our first killing frost until mid-December. I was still harvesting tomatoes and other veggies, and still had zinnia, sunflowers, celosias, Texas hummingbird sage and verbena bonariensis in bloom. It was pretty wonderful to be able to enjoy the garden until mid-December. I don't know if we'll ever have that happen again, but I hope for it every single year. Of course, in our first year here in 1999, we had our first killing freeze on Sept. 29 or 30, but I covered up stuff and kept most of it from freezing that early.

The weather here sure keeps all of us on our toes.

Dawn

In Grove we are enjoying the nice rain, but having a little laugh. The Tulsa news said that Grove had over seven inches, and we would sure like to know where they measured. The Mesonet says we have had 2.84 inches and I think the rain was actually heavier there than it was in Grove. I will just say this about the rainfall. I have no mud and can walk across my garden without difficulty. I know this because with the recent rains my cantaloupe vines are growing like they are on steroids and are covering my sidewalk. It is easier to just walk across the garden instead of trying to step through the vines. I know the ground was dry, but I don't think it could have 'sucked up' over seven inches.

I still haven't gotten my rain gauge back up again. But, judging from various utensils, around the yard, I'd say we received over 2" from Saturday to Sunday, at least. It rained for hours, a slow drenching rain. I know it was drenching, since a number of times I had to go out and work in it! Things are already looking better.

George

Carol, That 7" made me laugh out loud. Then, just in case you and I were losing our minds and somewhere near Grove there actually was 7", I went and looked long and hard at the 4-day Mesonet rainfall map. I enlarged it to 200% and looked at your county, and the area with the most rain estimated from radar still was only around 3". I would think the 7" reading is suspect, though it is always possible that 7" fell in a very small area, maybe at the home of a co-operative weather observer. The 7" reading makes me think something is wrong somewhere. Wouldn't it have been something to get 7" though instead of slightly under 3"?

We had another 2/10s in the rain gauge this morning, bringing our weekend total to 2.9". For August that is pretty incredible, and now I expect a lot of humidity and high heat index numbers. It was nice and foggy here this morning and I was outside early enough to watch the sunrise through the fog.

My garden is a jungle too and I've been trying to rein it in, but likely won't be able to work in it for a couple of days because of the mud.

There is a unusual sight on our property right now---the big pond has a few inches of water in its center. Still, you couldn't fish from the dock because (a) the water is nowhere near the dock, and (b) we caught the fish and moved them to the creek in 2005 as the pond was drying up so that they wouldn't die. We've never restocked it since the pond now seems to dry up every year since 2005. It is hard to remember, now, that we used to have fish in the pond year-round and could sit on the dock and fish.

My cantaloupe and winter squash vines are going crazy too, and so are the morning glories and bindweed. If I do anything in the garden the next couple of days, it will involve pulling up bindweed everywhere and morning glories in places where they aren't wanted because they'll smother adjacent veggies or flowers.

We had deep standing water everywhere yesterday and you had to put on boots to walk through the yard or your shoes were going to be soaked. Today most all of it has been absorbed into the ground, and we still have big cracks in the ground. It is going to take a lot more rain to close up those cracks, but I don't want too much at once because that makes the cracked ground shift too much too quickly and breaks pipes. That happened twice in about a 4-week period last year, so we're hoping for slower, steadier rainfall and not too much at once this year.

Dawn

Sooner, im not sure which station you watched that said 7 inches, they must have lost their minds somewhere. I watched channel 2 last night, Dan had it showing at 3.86. On my side of the lake, i know it poured and seems like about 2-3 inches is what we got. I dont have rain guage out.

Meanwhile back here at the ranch in Owasso we did get just a hair under 2.5 inches according to my 3 guages.

Dawn;
Is it the drought favoring the bind weed? That stuff is cropping up everywhere. Pretty soon I'll need move a small raised bed.

Dawn, our new pond has similar issues to your old pond that won't hold water now. I think the problem is that once is gets dry enough to get the large cracks that go down below the level where it seals off, it will no long hold water until there is so much rain over an extended epriod that the cracks close up before the water goes through them. Having cows using the pond appears to help seal it, but then you have issues with erosion along the banks, etc.

Congrats on all the rain everyone. At least the smaller rain total here allows me to do the spraying that is needed this week.

1.9 inches over the weekend and loving it. I'm so glad for everyone who got rain.

Bon, Bindweed ranks right up there on the 'evil' list with bermuda grass. In my garden, it seems like it sprouts all spring and summer long, and I have to work hard to keep pulling out the plants before they can flower and set seed. It is sneaky and tries to hide by mixing itself in with the the morning glories and with the vining vegetables.

Once you have bindweed seeds in your soil, you will fight them forever. I think the seeds can remain viable for 50 years or more.

The worst issue is if it gets established as a perennial vine with deep roots---you cannot dig enough to get them out and that vine just gets bigger every year, spreading roots underground while putting out massive top growth as well. As far as I know, I don't have any that has perennialized, but I get sprouts all over the place...not just in the garden, but all over the yard and pasture too. I hate this stuff.

Scott, Everyone who grew up here remembers when our pond was spring-fed and "always" had water in it. By the time we bought this place, though, I think the spring was drying up. The first year I remember the pond going dry was 2003 and that's the year we had to catch and move the fish before it completely dried up and they died. Since then, it normally is full only from fall through spring. At some point every summer it dries up. We have had several springs dry up in the dry 2000s, including the one that used to keep our swamp swampy. Nowadays, our swamp is only swampy for part of the year. In our early years it was swampy all the time.

Our big pecan tree in the front yard is so heavily laden with nuts that the limbs are bending down to the ground. We never spray, though, so they may not be edible. The limbs-sagging-down-to-the-ground thing is new, developing after the 3" of rain that has fallen since Saturday.

There are so many cracks in the pond bottom that the water runs down those cracks and goes clear to China or wherever and it takes months of rainfall for all those cracks to fill up. We now have waist high grass and tree saplings growing in the middle of our pond. (sigh) The persimmon grove that is growing around about half the pond's edges looks great. If we keep having dry summers and that grove of persimmon trees keeps spreading, our pond may turn into a persimmon grove that occasionally floods.

I noticed yesterday that some previously empty ponds in our area are still empty, but a few have an inch or two of water in them. It isn't much, but it is a start.

mjandkids, Oooh, that's great rainfall! I hope you get more.

It takes a lot of rain to end a drought, but maybe now we are on the road that leads to the lessening of drought instead of it continuing to get worse.

We need for Tropical Storm Isaac's remnants to pull an Erin and bring us lots of rainfall (not that there is anything about its track that makes me think it will do that for Oklahoma). Do y'all remember Erin? I do.

When Hermine came ashore down near the Texas/Mexico border a few years ago, its remnants came our way and dropped about 9" over our part of Love County in a brief, heavy period of rainfall, but a storm that makes landfall in Louisiana as Isaac is expected to do will recurve N/NE and not do that for us. (Still, we can dream of getting that kind of rainfall.)

For anyone who might not remember the remnants of Tropical Storm Eri and how they swirled over central OK, I'll link a story on this "thingamabobbercane" below.
Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Erin Over Oklahoma