According to my turtle gauge on the southside of OKC, we have had over 2 inches. Wish I had barrels. :-)

Wow, you all are getting lots of rain. Out here in the "desert" west I've only gotten about a 1/2 inch in the last few days. I'm glad that new bed I put in was for cactus and not flowers. ;)

WindsurfGirl

WindsurfGirl,

I hope those cactus bloom nicely when you do get a good soaking! I remember living in Tucson and when we had some good rains, the desert would come alive with colors! A beautiful sight!

Yes we got a nice steady rain in the early morning hours. EP

Yes, we got a most welcome rain in Moore - about one and a half inches, which is the most at one time we've had at our house all year. All year I've complained about the "dry hole" over my house since my friends, who live a half mile east of me always get more rain than we do.

We got a storm high winds and a tad over 3 inches of rain.

I wish I had barels too.

3-1/2" here.

I'm so glad for the rain hoping it will rain again! Didn't have to water the plants today! And we had a nice breeze blowing too...
Michelle

Here is a link that might be useful: I am the flag

Well, we got a lot of rain, hail, very high winds and had those swirly things all around us. Oh, to wake up to the sound of chain saws all over town. Sigh. More damaged trees up here. My son and grandson just got the huge piece of tree cut up from the last storm here. Ponca City, Blackwell and Newkirk were all without power last night. And probably more towns around here but those are the ones I know about for sure. The WalMart super store in PC was closed today due to flooding, guess they need to do something about the leaky roof. I do appreciate the rain though, was going to have to water. And so do the frogs, they were singing last night.

Well, I, like OKC1, am just south of Penn Square and Belle Isle, so I got what she got. Loved the fact that we got rain, and I didn't have to water. I had planned to prepare a new bed where the liriope was dug out, for my new aroids, but that can wait until next weekend. I guess the Good Lord knew I needed to do laundry today.

With all the talk of drought, does anyone want to change their opinion? It's so unusual for us to get rain in July, albeit early July.

Susan

We only had 1/2 inch or so on western edge of B.A. Lots of wind and then some more wind, followed by a little more breeze...

And hot and miserable this afternoon.

We only got 1/8" today down here in the SE corner of the state. Bleh. It was a nice, cool 90 degrees for this morning's 4th of July parade, though! Loved that!

Some folks are getting hit hard by the high winds.
So far so good here.
More rain this morning!
But it didn't rain terribly hard or for very long, so I doubt my new rain guage has more than a drop or two in it.
How about the rest of you?

Over 5 inches in the past couple of mornings. Yesterday morning I had to fish my potted bougainvillea out of the pond. It was in an old macrame hanger that broke. Mysterious. Other than that, no damage - just a few branches in the yard but no big ones. I'm very grateful not to have to water. BTW I found another soaker hose at our habitat store over the weekend. This one was still in the package. They sold it to me for $2. Got some landscape timber, too.

We got about 1/2" of rain each day on Monday and Tuesday, but also got high winds that tore up trees and blew over a lot of my tomato plants...cages, stakes, and all. We spent a lot of time cleaning up the storm damgage. Still, the 1" of rain we received over the two days was most welcome.

Was this rain enough for me to consider our drought to be "ended"? Not hardly. We still have had only about 11.5" of rain this year (and it is still the driest year on record for our county), our ponds are empty and the ground has huge cracks. It would take another 10" or 12" of rain for me to feel the drought is over.

A lot of our local gardeners and farmers have plowed under their crops, or cut down their stunted cornstalks to feed to the cattle, since the stalks aren't making corn because of the drought. This is by far the driest weather I have ever seen, and I have the water bills to prove it!

Dawn

We got 4" of rain here in Murray county over a two day period. But we had high winds and storms to go with it. We lost three large limbs on two trees in the yard. Had many plants very damaged or destroyed. I am grateful for the rain but am so sick of living where you have to have tornado type high winds to get a drop of rain. This was three times in one month we've had damaging wind storms. I beg my DH to move but he won't hear of it. Don't get me wrong. I love Oklahoma, but I am really getting sick of the weather we have. Sick enough that I would seriously move out of state if I could. I'm sick of drought and sick of high winds. I read recently that we are the second most windy state in the whole union. l live up on top of a hill in a rural location, so it's particularly windy for me, not having anything for a windbreak. Okay, I apologize for the whining . . . Just getting sick of all my plants being destroyed every time we get a drop of rain. Waahhh

Hey. Wolfover, I can relate.
My first summer of gardening in NW OK had me ready to pack it in when, for three years running, the heat and wind in my hilltop garden dried the corn on the stalks in one day.
If it wasn't wind, it was grasshoppers, drought, red clay, or floods.
It's truly amazing to me how much easier it is to grow things in the city than it is out in the hinterlands.
Makes you truly appreciate the travails of the pioneers, though, doesn't it?

Sorry to hear of your losses, Wolflover. DId you lose any of your aroids? I'd be happy to share if you did.

I didn't get any wind damage at all this year. But, in the past, I lost half of a bradford pear (woke up and looked out the back patio doors, and the trunk of a tree was staring me in the face; this was a 30' tree). Next year, the other half went. It has since grown back, but it has about 6 slender trunks on it, so we'll see. I have a very protected area, too, so it's hard to understand. The tree is situated between my house (south facing backyard), the stockade/steel fence, the neighbor's garage and my deck. How the wind snakes in between these small places, I have yet to figure out.

Susan

Aw, Wolflover, I'm sorry. :-( Whine away!

We got some more rain this morning but it was just a trace.

Awww, y'all are so sweet! Oklahoma may have lousy weather sometimes, but it has the best people in the world!! I really appreciate your sympathy and I know you all understand, because you live here too.

Yes OKC1, I certainly think about the poor pioneers. I can't imagine how any of them had the strength to stick it out here. DH's family packed it up and moved west to California, but he came back. Now you couldn't drag him away from OK. And I do believe gardening in town is much easier than in the country. But if I lived in town, I wouldn't have all this room, or my privacy, or all the great things that go with country living. So I need to quit whining and take the good with the bad.

Thanks for the offer, Susan, but the aroids made it through the storm. One voodoo lily blew off the porch, so I am replanting it into the ground as soon as it dries up. I need to learn to quit planting plants like Southern Bell hibiscus. In the last storm, it lost six limbs. This storm ALL the limbs broke off at the ground, the day after it started blooming. The leaves are too large and the buds/blooms are too heavy to survive the wind I get up on top of this hill. My Lord Baltimore and Texas Star hibiscuses with the thinner leaves and smaller blooms are just fine -- the wind doesn't faze them. In fact, they started blooming today after all the rain we got. So as a gardener, I've got to learn to quit planting plants that can't take the wind, the drought, the grasshoppers, the heat, etc., that Oklahoma throws at them. Then I wouldn't be so disappointed. I need to take your approach Diane, and quit babying my plants. I imagine I will eventually get to that point. I have put in a new cactus garden this year, so at least I'm heading in the right direction! LOL

On the bright side, I got 23 of the prettiest hostas today that I have ever seen, from a trader in Indiana. I have never seen hostas this large in my life. Poor plants, I know they are going to hate living at my house in "Droughtville, USA". LOL.

Thanks again for listening to me whine. :-)

Actually, Wolflover, I have found my hostas to be pretty drought tolerant, once they are established, so may you'll do quite well with them. Some of the ones with the larger leaves (Sum & Substance, Blue Angel, for example) do suffer from wind damage. I have found small sticks piercing a leaf, as though someone just shot it with a bow and arrow!

Sounds like you have some planting on your hands. I'm getting a ton of butterfly nectar and host plants sometime this week and next that I will have to plant, along with the other aroids I bought last weekend. So, I have my work cut out for me, too.

Glad to hear your aroids made it thru the storm!

Susan

Wolflover,

Sorry to hear about all the wind damage at your place. We had similar damage here but with much less rain, so I think I am jealous!

When I start feeling "sick of the heat, sick of the drought, sick of the wind", and (God forbid!) "sick of having 'too many tomatoes'", I know that I am suffering from garden burnout and I force myself to stay out of/away from the garden for a few days. It always hits me in late June or early July. After a few days of housework, crafts, shopping, bathing the dogs, cleaning out closets, etc., I am ready to return to the garden a little less stressed!

Is planting a windbreak of evergreen trees or shrubs an option for you? A windbreak really does help if you are in an exposed location, but it can take a few years for the trees/shrubs to get large enough to help moderate the amount of wind damage. I have large native windbreaks of heavily forested areas on the north and south sides of my gardens, and it does make a difference. My worst damage always occurs when storm are out of the east or out of the west. (Guess I need to plant a manmade windbreak on those sides of the property.)

Dawn

Is anyone else eyeing Hurricane Dennis with anticipation in hopes it brings us some rain? Of course, I hope no one gets hurt down south but I sure would like it to veer our way and bring us some nice, saturating rainstorms on it's way north before petering completely out!

Me, me, me!
(Hand is raised and waving!)
I am hoping the southesast doesn't hog all the rain an dthat some of it drifts west and north out of Texas.
Reluctantly started the soaker hoses this morning all ready.
It has been nice, though, not to have to spend all my week's vacation out watering. guess that is on my to do list for the next couple of days.

It would be so wonderful to get some more rain from the hurricane, but I hope the winds stay away, LOL. I haven't had to water since the 4" of rain on Monday and Tuesday.

No Dawn, I certainly don't have a case of garden burnout. My gardens are my sanctuary. My problem is struggling to grow beautiful gardens and then having them repeatedly destroyed by high winds. I've learned to take photographs weekly, because I know the gardens aren't going to stay gorgeous for very long. I usually take the storm damage in stride, but two wind storms in one week just set me over the edge.

Wolflover--We just aren't having much wind here in Love County lately, perhaps because we aren't having rain. I hope the weather is kinder to you for the rest of the summer, since it seems like it has been cruel enough (too much!) already.

I was just watching Hurricane Dennis come ashore on the Weather Channel the last couple of hours, and wondering how in the world the gardeners in its path cope with having their landscapes destroyed. It would be bad enough to have it happen once, but imagine knowing that another hurricane could come along any time!

I guess I have to give up on my hope that the hurricane would turn towards Lousiana and Texas and maybe send some bands of rain our way. Our weather this summer reminds me of Elmer Kelton's novel "The Time It Never Rained". I'd go back and re-read it now, but am afraid it would be too depressing.

Dawn

We got about 10 drops yesterday. 20 more drops earlier today. Been thundering for a few hours as storms pop up around us. Just came in to check the radar and, hot,dang, looks like we're gonna get some rain!! Bring it on!

Good job, Diane. Go ahead and jinx yourself, why don't ya? Argh!

Stupid storms formed all around us. Made a complete circle on the radar. The clear hole in the middle was right over us. Never did get any of it.

I'm keeping my big trap shut next time! :-p

Diane, the dry one