Good morning everyone, hope everyone is all right and no one recieved any damage from this storm.
We got about 1 1/2" of rain last night, and about 1:30 am, we had a severe thunder storm whith hail about marble size, but no damage to speak of.
The rain this year is almost beyond jokeing about, I had such high hopes for my garden this year, I know, I know, we have to think positive, and I know the rain will stop, and we can replant if necessary.
So everyone stay safe and think those positive thoughts.

I'm fine here in Skiatook. We had pea-sized hail for maybe five minutes and a lot of strong wind. My son's "fort" made of pallets and plywood was blown about 10'. I'd planted sunflowers around three sides of it, but from the back porch it looks like most of them made it so the wind must have picked it up and threw it instead of rolling it. I'll know more when the ground dries out enough to walk out and look without getting muddy. Everything else looks fine. The trees sure are getting a workout on rooting!

Fine here in Edmond. More rain, lots of lightening, thunder and wind and some pea sized hail for a few minutes on the leading edge. Was a really pretty light show in the sky. I'm going to go out later and check on the gardens, but from the window, all looks well.

Prayers that everyone is alright :)

Kathy

All is well. We had storms all around us, but other than heavy thunder and lightening, and of course, more rain, it was rather uneventful. I shut my computer down because it was very, very close to us.

I was glad that I had mowed my squishy lawn before it hit. Looks pretty weird tho because around the trees, I still have tall grass. I actually got stuck on the mower and had to push it out of a hole. I was in the back by a small shed where an old tree had been cut. I guess the underground parts had finally rotted out and the top was so covered with wild strawberries that it was deep enough to get stuck in. The wild strawberries are about twice as tall as normal. I didn't have time to finish everything, but I was glad I got that much done since it will be several days before it is dry enough to mow again. Who says "rain prayers" don't work. OK, OK, enough is enough.

I hope Ilene checks in, because they were seeing funnels over in her area. I heard the sirens go off in Bartlesville behind the "weather chasers" on TV.

OK here in Dewey. We could hear Bartlesville's sirens going off but it went south of Bartlesville (we're north of Bartlesville) and I don't think anything touched down. Lots of rain, lots of lightning and wind, no hail.

Now the apple tree is leaning in the OTHER direction. This morning I found the props laying on the ground and the side of the tree skinned up some where they had been. I think I will probably end up planting a tree in another location and giving up on this one when the new tree starts to bear. I've never known an apple tree to not put down roots any better than this. This is a yellow delicious but the apples are big and round and don't have that funny shape on the blossem end like the delicious apples you buy at the store. But it is a wonderful tart-sweet apple that holds up well. Still, if I have to plant a new tree I think I will go Fuji.

Tomatoes are still OK, although the ones I planted in the ground rather than in raised beds are looking stressed and have not grown much. Of the tomatoes that are in the raised beds, the Kellogg's Breakfast is getting ready to bloom. The beans are up, except so far no Calico Willow Leaf, and so are the cukes. I replanted Lazy Housewife, as they came up so sparsely, then discovered a vole tunnel where I had planted them. My little old lady friends in Copan informed me that the voles and moles do not eat the plants but that mice will travel in the tunnels and they will eat everything. Sunflowers, sunchokes, cabbage, lettuce and onions are loving this weather. I've had to BUY pepper plants, as the seeds I direct sowed never came up. I won't make that mistake next year. But then next year won't be like this year, it'll be a whole new ballgame again. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not, but that's Oklahoma for you.

There was a SLUG in my DISHWASHER!!!!!! Ugh.

I was lucky and missed all the rain, wind, and hail last night. We only got about .25 last night, but I don't know how much additional we got this morning. Normally I would be upset to be in the small area that was bypassed by the rain, but this year I am happy about it.

It looks like an area around Lawton got the huge quantities of rain this time.

All is well here. More limbs & leaves down. No more peony flowers. They were lovely this year. We had everything Kathy had and 1-1/4" in gauge this morning. Despite all of this, everything is so green!

Laura

Norman had the tornado sirens on around 11pm last night. I wathed a great lightening show and heard lots of loud thunder. NOT A DROP of rain! YAY! The veggie garden is soaking up all of the sun today! Things are looking up!

I am glad to see so many of y'all are well.

I am feeling particularly concerned about Tomatoman Billy who lives near Anardarko. They had a lot of rain and high wind and possible tornadoes there last night, the power is out, school was cancelled and evacuation centers are open. Since his power likely is out, we may not hear from Bill and I certainly hope he is OK.

Ilene, I was particularly concerned about you and Gayle (who I believe posts as "Barton") last night since the weather in our area was so wicked. We were watching the radar there around you hours and hours before we had any weather happening here.

Your poor apple tree is starting to act like a weather vane.

Your description of your in-the-ground at grade level tomatoes is exactly how I'd describe mine. I keep thinking that "if only" it would dry out some, the ones planted at grade level would bounce back just fine. Sadly, though, the drying up of the soil is slow to occur and, just when I think we're making progress, it rains again. The tomatoes in the raised beds are fine, and the ones in containers are doing great.

I think there are some folks who would disagree with your friends and would argue that voles and moles do damage plants. I am not positive that they eat the plants (because I have never actually witnessed them eating plants), but they certainly do mess up their roots.

Scott, the way all the storms keep missing you here and there makes me think you might have your own personal dry spell going on there! Maybe you got so much rain last year that you are getting a break for a while now.

The Lawton area did get pounded as you noted. Our friends near Duncan didn't think the storm sounded so bad when it hit them last night, but I heard this morning that there's a lot of uprooted trees and other damage, so maybe they were just lucky in their part of Duncan.

Only sporadic sunshine here today and mostly clouds, but at least rain is not falling.

Dawn

There is one tree down, and lots of branches all over, while we were driving in to our neighborhood. Some branches down in my yard, but all seems well.

My rain barrels are full, and my raingauge had only 1 1/4 inch in it, since Jerry left for New Mexico on late Friday last week.

Moni

We gotsome small hail, wind and a little rain. All the tomatoes look fine though.

I think the storm parted for my part of town. I saw lightning flashes and heard distant thunder but no hail. My rain gauge had less than 1/2" in it yesterday morning.

Other than a peony that has blooms laying on the ground because of the weight, all my plants seem quite happy. Although I'm sure they'd all appreciate a break in the clouds and some sunshine. My little cucumbers have had several flowers on them in spite of the plants being only about 6" tall so far. Tomatoes haven't bloomed, but the little plants are growing quite well since I put them in the ground about 4 weeks ago. The purple angel's trumpet I got from Dawn at the plant swap has two flowers on it! It, too, is only about 6" tall.

My back yard has such a significant slope to it that all excess water drains into the back easement. I just don't have any spots capable of holding water because of the slope.

The news last night seemed to indicate that while there was significant property damage in the Anadarko area, there were no fatalities and few injuries. They interviewed some Native Americans whose church and fellowship hall were demolished. The church was built in the 1920s I think they said, but the fellowship hall was more than a hundred years old and had recently been put on the list of historic buildings. I haven't seen our grad student, Chelsea, since the storm to ask her how her community garden fared.

Debra

I'm glad everyone is okay from the storms the other night. I live 15 miles east of Norman and the tornado was very close, but we are fine. Lots of lightning and thunder and heavy rain. It's good to be back to the forum, I haven't been here since last season!
Lee Ann

Dawn,
Thanks for ur concern. We were in the cellar when the bad weather came. Had been planning to be there all afternoon, and when it did come we were safe. We stayed in the cellar nearly an hour. That's a long time down there, more than you usually have to stay. I'm 3 1/2 mi so of town and did not have any damage per se. It hailed for such a long time. Usually hail comes and goes in about a couple of mins., but this never really got wound up and just hailed for quite some time.
I did have some garden damage. I have my tomatoes in 6x6" crw made into tunnels and it makes it hard to cover them for hail, but we had all the usual suspects in the garden for hail duty. dishpans, 5 gal buckets, discarded flower pots, wheelbarrows, plastic soda cases, old plastic ice cream buckets, and more. The coffee (1 gal) cans are too small, as the tomatoes have outgrown them.
As of (Friday evening) we are expecting more of the same. Am about to report to the garden to replace the buckets. I told Betty today that I have nearly worn the tomato plants out covering and ucovering them for the hail, curling them up in the coffee cans when they were smaller.
A small sidebar for you all. Of course the TV Stations were here interviewing people all over town. One dumb lady said (BOLDLY) to the TV camera "we didnt have any warning"....That's a little rediculous as I knew it was coming for 2 days.
Best of luck to all of You.
Bill

Bill,

It is such a relief to hear that y'all are OK.

I don't know if we've ever stayed in the cellar an hour---well, maybe once we did.

I am glad you were able to round up the usual suspects and cover up as many plants as possible. It is hard to cover them once they're caged. Like you, I use anything and everything I have handy when hail is likely.

I hope tonight's round of storms go easy on you. I worked outside until dark, so I haven't been watching the radar tonight, but I'm going to go look at it in a minute.

We aren't expecting anything here until well after midnight, but I did put up lawn furniture and stuff like that so it wouldn't blow around. The last round (the night y'all got hit), it mostly missed us, but I don't know if we'll be so lucky two storms in a row.

Once again, I'm just tickled to death to hear that y'all weren't injured and escaped major damage. I hope your garden rebounds quickly from the damage it received.

Dawn

I'm pretty sure we passed the inch mark already....

Lisa

Tonight's gust front mostly died out before it got to us, so our winds were relatively light. The rain is here but it started losing strength around Tulsa also. Likely around an inch will fall total. I feel pretty fortunate.

It's such a big difference living here compared to the OKC area and the Stillwater area. A pretty high percentage of the severe storms lose intensity by the time they get here after the sun has gone down.

My rain gauge says a little over 2.25 inches. I expect 2.5 before this is finished.

We've missed out on a lot of the massive rainfall, this rainfall won't hurt my garden any.

Scott, that's interesting that it's lessening. It seemed to increase after nightfall here.

Lis

Yes, the further east you go, the more precipitation you get, but without as much severity as areas west of us that have the storms come more often in the afternoon when the air is more unstable.

It looks like a lot of rain is filling in behind the first storms. It's looking like a lot more than one inch might happen here also.

Well, it is just about to hit here. It has been raining and hailing about 7-10 miles west of us for the last 20 minutes but all we have so far is wind.

I've looked at the radar, though, and we're about to get it. (Stamping foot and having a mini temper-tantrum.) Today was the first day in two weeks I was able to work outside and come inside with dry feet. I guess I won't be able to say the same tomorrow.

Scott, I have noticed that when these storms hit after midnight, we often don't have the hail. Uh oh....it is here and it is raining hard!

Dawn

WOW, it was four centimeters of rain in my gauge just now!

1.57 inches! :) using the converter.

Here is a link that might be useful: cm to inch converter

We had the oddest storm. As I said earlier, it was raining and hailing west of us when Tim got home from work about 1 a.m. and it had been for quite some time.

I got up and checked the radar and the storm was right there where we were. We had all kinds of lightning and wind and thunder. The rain, though? It seemed to stall or mostly go around us. Once the rain started and I shut down the computer to go to bed, the rain stopped. It just stopped. (Not complaining!)

I'd say the rain didn't last but maybe 15 minutes at the most and all we have in the rain gauge is a quarter-inch. Since the ground is really waterlogged from recent rains, there are puddles everywhere so it looks like more rain fell than what actually did. I certainly can live with a quarter-inch.

There is a lot of rain approaching the entire southern half of the state from roughly Hwy 40 south, so maybe some of us will get a little more rain today. After that, though, we're going to have better weather.