We had our first rainfall in 32 days yesterday. It was just a light mist most of the day and wasn't even accumulating in the rain gauge. Last night, heavier rain fell briefly. How briefly? We got a whole 0.14". It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

I'm concerned about the low soil moisture levels too, but since I had a fall/winter garden growing until it froze last week when we hit 12 degrees, I have been watering the garden itself. I think that in the fenced veggie garden, I'll continue watering about once a week to keep moisture in the soil for spring planting. The rest of our property is pitifully dry and, since we have red Oklahome clay, it is badly cracked and getting worse every day. I'm expecting 2013 to be another dry gardening year.

At this point, I am more concerned about wildfire danger than soil moisture, although to an extent the two are linked with one another. When the soil is as dry as it is now in most of Oklahoma, even the underground plant roots can burn. At least in 2011 we had good fall rainfall that helped a lot with recovery from the drought, but that isn't happening for most of Oklahoma this year.

Back from going outside and checking.... I actually have .28 of an inch of rain in my gauge. It's more than I thought.... cause it blew over so fast last evening.

Moni