I just saw that too. The drought is in its 9th year the weatherman just said. Its a lot of rain too. The reservoirs are extremely low there and he said this will help. I just posted a thread on the Texas Forum to see how they are faring down there.

A thread was started asking "what is a "Heat Dome" on the perennials forum and I ended up in a bit of of "tussle" with someone from New England. I need the duct tape sometimes. Seems the majority there is from the NE and I didn't have much in common with those folks. They don't understand our conditions up there and they don't much care either. Someone needs to inform some of them that this is one country and they are affected when we are affected. Sorry, I am ranting now but I got my feelings hurt and our state was sort of insulted more than once there. I tried my best to explain it and I kept thinking of Ma Joad from Grapes of Wrath the whole time. I even quoted that last line of the movie where she's telling Pa "Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids aint no good an' they die out. But we keep a 'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever Pa, 'cause we're the people" but I later deleted it. So help me, I did, my neck is still hot from embarrassment.

We sure know what a Heat Dome is down here. I think maybe I just need a dose of down to earth people from Oklahoma who can relate to difficult growing conditions right now. They thought my drought hardy prairie garden looked like "eg Parking Lot plantings" there.

Do people still think of us as hillbilly Okies? I think some do. Can I say all this here? Is it safe?

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Tue, Sep 10, 13 at 19:24

My climate is milder than yours. Anyone who tries to garden against the odds has my admiration. It is dry here but I'm sure not as dry as your conditions. It is not just the people in the East who don't understand.

RANT:I get so mad at the weathermen. We had no rain in June daylilies were ugly. I siphoned all the water from the pond on the hill and saved bathwater and siphoned it out the window. When we got rain in August that I prayed for one of our weathermen complained and moaned about all the rain. People had to be rescued on the river where they were camping dah. All the local news was about the rain. Very little was said about the drought. They never want it to rain on the weekend and they call a sprinkle that barely wets the bottom of the rain gauge rain.

I hope so, too. Scott, you're NE, right? I saw today they are giving OKC a pretty good shot at some rain beginning Monday, maybe you will get your wish as well.

I did see on meteorologist on FB post the following about winter today:
Oct: Temps much below normal. Nov: Temps about normal. Dec: Temps above normal Jan-Feb: Temps much below normal. March: Back to normal. Precip output greater than normal, ie snow/ice/rain. Conclusion: Nasty.

Latest model run gives us in the Tulsa area only scattered rain over the next 7 days, nothing substantial. It has a tropical system coming up from the gulf that might change things though next week. Still lots of variation from run to run so not much confidence in the forecast.

Bone dry here again. Just a few more inches of rain will get the pecan crop through to shucksplit, but we need it soon.

GreatPlains1, just let them under-estimate us. I love it when they do, myself.

I'm a Veteran Marine. Most people think of of the Corps as an outfit that never loses and is tough as hell in a fight. At the same time, there's a meme about 'stupid Marines.' We let 'em keep thinking that we're stupid...and we end up winning, time after time, after time.

The Grapes of Wrath is interesting, but if you can find it. also watch the original -subtitled- "The Seven Samurai."

The same thing goes with under-estimating a redneck. The redneck wins, every time.

They want to under-estimate Okies? Let 'em. In the end, we win.

“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment ��" that which they cannot anticipate.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

wbonesteel, I have been lurking and watching your garden progress and the contest etc. Thats some dern good artistic gardening by a Veteran Marine and Redneck (if you are one?). The Nobs up east might possibly poo poo yours too just because its from Okiehoma. Maybe I went a bit overboard in my Heat Dome explanation but I was pretty irritated because I am the only one that has ever used that phrase there and it felt like a baited hook. Yea, I bit. I just couldn't resist.

My family homesteaded here way back when and this is the only home I have ever known, we've lived here for 5 generations. You know, a person takes it kind of personal when others make like you are, well, you know....from a lesser place.

helen, the weather men here sure talk about the drought, all the time. Ours was even excited once when we got hail. That was the very first time I ever heard a weatherman say hail was good because it was at least some moisture in some form.

I bet Jay would take some hail if they weren't bigger than quarters and marbles?

A friend of mine had to go to the courthouse this week. There was this real long line. He said 99% were up there paying fines for watering on the wrong day. This water rationing is supposed to stay in place from here on out. Its the new 'normal'.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Wed, Sep 11, 13 at 4:58

should have kept my mouth (keyboard) shut. Models this morning keep the tropical system away from us and have less precip coming in with the fronts also.

Great Plains...ohhhh, they are truly enforcing that? I have been sneaking in a little watering here and there because I can't seem to get my watering done on the right day.

I can relate to the tough gardening year, most of mine are like that. I just have to adjust where I can and make the best of it. I have not been able to water as much as I would have liked to. My crops are telling me this year is over. Although I want rain, it will do my crops more harm than good because of splitting.

The forecast shows chances of rain later in the month. I have already started cutting the pumpkins loose from the vines, and hope to get someone to dig my sweet potatoes. The vines are stressed and I expect greater splitting if I get rain on them. This may seem strange for some people, but we all try to find a way to work with the conditions we have.

If I were trying to grow a garden up north I am sure I would do things a little differently, it has nothing to do with being a Redneck or a Yankee, it is just a matter of trying to find a method that works for us.

Larry

Greatplains

I read trough that topic and looks like you guys got to an understanding. Most was edited but Im sure it got intense. Sorry I wasnt there to help you deal with the yanks! LOL

I really hope we get some rain soon.

mike

Lisa, DH has seen the code enforcement officer in our neighborhood (in OKC) writing tickets - I think they are $200! - for watering on the wrong day. I don't know how/if they are policing it in your area.

OUCH! I'm safe if they only work government hours :) My biggest problem is I got off the habit when when we had so much rain earlier! I have to set that rotating pattern and dedicated watering schedule early in the season. (you know, every 30 minutes, move the water hose until you go to bed)

If the Village gets to keep the enforcement fee..I am quite sure they are ON it!

Scott, I have such low faith in the models any more that I don't believe what they say when they say it. It doesn't matter what they have forecasted for us this year. We've consistently been both hotter and drier than the forecast, so I always look at the forecast and then assume we'll continue to be hotter than forecast and drier than forecast.

Since very little rain has fallen here in our area the last 2 months, a lot of trees are dropping leaves as a survival mechanism. At first it was just the types of trees that really don't like the intense heat and dry weather---like sycamores, cottonwoods and redbuds, but now I'm even seeing the native persimmons, oaks and pecans dropping foliage. Obviously I can't water almost 15 acres. Even the trees in the yard, which has been watered regularly, are dropping leaves. If rain fell right now, and in a fairly decent amount, I don't think it would be enough to help them much now.

We're in about our 15th consecutive month of drought here, so the trees are really hurting. I realize that's nothing compared to how long some people, like Jay for example, have been in drought, but it's hard to see the trees in bad shape for the third summer in a row. Our last good rainfall year here was 2010.

Greatplains, I think that people who never have lived here in this region and dealt with the conditions we have just don't get it and never will. The way that our heat and lack of rain can combine to wreak havoc on plantings, even native ones, is beyond the comprehension and understanding of people who've never experienced it. Even a lot of the non-gardeners I know that do live here just don't understand how severe a combination the heat/drought can be on their plantings, and tend to put in landscape plantings that never will be happy on low irrigation to no irrigation.

There probably are a lot of people from other regions who think we're all hillbillies and rednecks, and I don't let it bother me. How long would they and their gardens last here? I grew up in dry north central Texas and the weather I have here is as bad as it was there in dry years and probably a little hotter and drier than when we lived in Fort Worth. We're not going to pack up and move away, though, so I just have to live with it. I feel like every year the list of what can grow and survive in the soil we have here combined with the weather we've had since around 2003 is getting shorter and shorter.

Water rationing is becoming a more or less permanent thing in many of the Texas areas south of us, but not so much in our part of OK yet. I remember when they used to enact water restrictions in Dallas and Fort Worth only once the water levels in the lakes hit a certain point. Now the watering restrictions are written into law to start on a certain date, no matter what the weather is doing. From there, the restrictions do tighten up based on certain conditions, but the restrictions are in effect even in wet years. When we are down there, I see both residential and commercial plantings that are incredibly dry and brown compared to how they looked 5 or 10 years ago. It almost looks like a lot of people have just given up and stopped trying in terms of keeping their landscaping looking good. More likely, though, they probably are doing what they can with whatever watering restrictions their communities have in place.

We're pretty rural here so I suppose the demand for water is much lower overall than in more heavily populated areas that have more homes and residences per square mile. Of course, it depends on which municipal water supplier or water co-operative you belong to. Other water co-ops and companies have often had water restrictions in place, but not ours.

In 15 years, I don't remember our water co-op ever rationing water or imposing watering restrictions of any kind other than asking people to reduce usage temporarily if a water main has broken or if a well has broken down and isn't pumping. Those are situations where you might have low water pressure for a few hours or even for a whole day. However, they have restricted membership, and that has prevented people from building houses near us at times. Our water co-op is incredibly well-managed and won't add new customers if there are not enough water wells to handle their water needs. New members have had to wait, at times, for a new well to be dug and brought online before they can buy into the co-op and get water service, though I think it has been a few years since they had to do that.

Down here, you can water as much as you want any time you want, but the water is not cheap so you have to be willing to pay a big water bill if you're irrigating a lot in the dry months.

I'm surprised how quickly parts of central and NE OK have dried out ever since y'all's heavy rain stopped falling...around, what, 3 or 4 weeks ago? If good rain doesn't come soon, y'all will catch up with us in terms of drought and low soil moisture.

What often saves us here in southern OK in August or early September is for a nice tropical storm to hit Texas and send a plume of moisture our way. The last one that I remember which did that was Hermine three years ago this week. We got a ton of rain at our house, and we really needed it. It even refilled our ponds. Unfortunately, some of the parts of OK that got hit by Hermine's remnants also experienced flooding, so sometimes it seems like you can't win either way.

We haven't had to mow our yard in several weeks now, except for the area just outside the sunporch, between the house and the garage. I keep that area watered so the ground won't crack enough to crack the water line. (The ground shifted and the water line cracked twice in 2011 and once in 2012, but this year the water line hasn't broken yet.)

After I read this post this morning, I went and looked at the forecast models and the rainfall forecast and, at least for south-central OK, I don't have much hope for significant rainfall.

Our high temperature has been under 100 degrees for two consecutive days now. It was 99 on Monday and 98 on Tuesday, and while that was only marginally cooler than the previous days, I could tell it was a little cooler. Or, maybe saying 99 instead of 100 or 103 just tricks your mind into thinking you can tell it is cooler.

For the last 30 days, most of Oklahoma has not seen significant rain. Look at the map below to see how dry it has been. It looks awful. I've linked the map that compares the rainfall recorded the last 30 days to the 30-year-average for the same period.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

I saw this on FB earlier today and thought it might be of interest to some folks here ...

Here is a link that might be useful: Shelterbelt Story

What I wonder is how the water rationing is patrolled? Are there people who are hired to drive around taking names or are people turning people in? It does make me crazy to see the # of sprinkler systems set on automatic to go off every other day (I am not exaggerating) with nozzles set wrong which aim water toward the street or driveway and watching the run off into the street. I see this over and over... even last year when we were being compared to the Dust Bowl times. A green BERMUDA lawn during such a year is obscene to me.

I'm sorry, I see it that way. When did we ever get to that kind of mentality? Seems like everyone now has a sprinkler system. So on that score, I am not upset at all at the notion of rationing if it curbs that kind of waste, drought or not.

Mike, I sure would have welcomed your help with the northern lady, I needed help. Thanks for saying that.

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 14:13

Mia, thats a great article. This is one of my favorite subjects. I have read every book or piece I could lay my hands on. I love the grasslands. It breaks my heart to see them destroyed and especially the forestation taking place. We lost one of the great wonders of nature when we destroyed it.

There was a documentary on OETA the other night on the Great Plains. Did anyone else see it? It made me cry. They said to appreciate the plains you have to get out of your car and look close. Its so true. I have been trying to learn as much as I can about this.

GP, Glad to see you arent letting it get to ya. it is hard to bite our tongues especially when dealing with irrational people. I myself have avoided certain forums here because of the "scolding" if feel I was dealt when trying to offer a differing opinion. One place I have never felt uncomfortable to express my opinions or offer advice has been this one.

some people on Gardenweb are so locked into the mentality that what works for them "must" work for everyone and that is just not true. I would never ever tell a northern person that they Have to use a more water retentive container soil in their location based solely on the fact that we here in hot Oklahoma do tend to need to. Ive gotten scolded or at least feel like I have been when i suggested that the "Gritty Mix" doesnt work well for me. I have a few other Okies that it hasnt worked well for them either. Its not that its bad but for us/me it isnt the best.

On the flip side I have had some discussion with quite a few Northerners on this site that have been very good, quite good actually. So I just avoid discussions with the people I dont want to hear from.

Mike

Mike,
I once mentioned on another forum that adding coarse sand helped my soil more than all the other amendments I'd added in 20 years. Not that the other amendments didn't help but the sand made a huge difference for me. Water now soaks in quickly and deeply and the roots have a much easier time and develop much better. Also, I no longer get the big cracks like I used to when its dry and I water much less often.

People sometimes take their soil very personally. I'm guessing at what you are saying. I don't give suggestions about soil amendments anymore because each situation is individual and its just not worth dealing with an emotional reaction. And no, I did not end up "creating concrete".

This post was edited by GreatPlains1 on Sun, Sep 15, 13 at 14:14

I am not sure about weather models... I cringe at the fact, they name the amount of days without rain this year... when last year, we had those 100 degree days and no rain, and no mention about the non existing rain was heard.

Now, I do know, we will get rain in the OKC area soon, cause the fair started today. It always rains during the fair. :)

Moni