Scott, Isn't that simply incredible to think about? It isn't just the extreme lack of moisture, but the extreme heat that accompanied it too. What worries me is that this seems to be a trend that isn't breaking and may last several more years.

I felt sure you would get good fall rainfall and that your year-to-date rainfall would catch up with mine and surpass it by the end of the calendar year. I no longer think that because we've had 27.5" and I cannot imagine you'll get enough rain before the year ends to beat that number. We've been really dry the last few months, but had pretty good rainfall through the end of June, which has carried us through the year about half-decently. I'd rather have had more rain recently, but it hasn't happened.

We were out at a wildfire in the southwestern part of our county two weeks ago, and it was shockingly dry. They have sandy soil, and I don't have much sandy soil, so maybe it is just that I am not used to how extremely sandy soil looks when it is dry, but the soil looked awful. Usually it looks more like beach sand, though slightly more brown. This time, I was watching as a local rancher was going around us in circles, trying to plow a fire break to protect what was left of his hay pastures, and the soil was flying up into the sky like a huge cloud of ultra-fine, almost talcum-powder-like dust. It was just superfine and stayed suspended in the air forever. It was scary, reminding me of those dust bowl clouds that blackened the sky. I don't see superfine dusty soil like that here in my part of the county. It was shocking to see it.

For everyone wondering how the rainfall looks at their local Mesonet station and how it compares to other areas in the state, I'm going to link the year-to-date rainfall map. In our county, we've have 3 or 4 years drier than this year just since we moved here in '99, so while we've been dry, we haven't been record-setting-dry for the year overall like Scott has been (and I bet Dorothy's rainfall for this year is about as low as her area ever has seen too).

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

The closest records I have access to are for Ft. Smith, which is down a little over 12" below normal.

Larry

Larry, At our house we are about 12" below normal, maybe 11.5". This year's rainfall is about as bad as last year's. so that would be a 2-year deficit of about 2' of moisture. We'll never make it up, you know. I am now seeing some farm stock tanks near us that rarely, if ever, dry up at the lowest level I've ever seen. They're spring-fed and I don't think they even dried up last year. They might have dried up in 2003 when we had less than 19" of rain, but if they did, I don't remember noticing they were dry. A lot of ranchers around our county have put in new stock tanks in the last 2 or 3 years to supplement what they already have, and some of those tanks haven't even filled up yet. At this point, those tanks might be irrelevant because so many people have sold off all or a significant portion of their herds due to lack of grazing land that will support them coupled with the high cost of feed. If you don't have a lot of cattle, it doesn't matter if the tanks run dry.

I'm going to link a Mesonet map that shows this year's rainfall as a percentage of normal rainfall. If I remember correctly, the last time I looked at it, most of OK was in the 60-80% of normal category. Considering that we are almost always too dry in the summer of a normal-rainfall year, that 60-80% just isn't enough.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful:

The following comparison of the USA drought footprint from each year was posted on its own thread by Chandra back in the summertime.

I am astonished at how much 2012 looks like some of the Dust Bowl years.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Drought Footprint Article and Maps