I don't think she got very much earlier, but she probably will in the next hour. Looks like the storm is making a final and unexpected push south and will dump another inch or so on her tonight.

We want to hear from you, Dawn!

Ooops, sorry. I've been in the kitchen engaged in a massive canning marathon. The last batch is in the canner and I now am reconnecting with the real world.

We got 0.92" in the back garden rain gauge from earlier today. It was enough to make the ground muddy. Woo hoo!

Right now, we've got that storm in our area that Scott referred to. Heavy thunder, constant lightning---like strobe lights. Not a drop of rain falling here. Hopefully it is coming soon.

Are all of y'all flooding yet?
Dawn

Things have stopped here....I checked my rain gauge just now and it's right at 2.5 inches...I'll be interested to see what Lisa gets (she usually gets a little more than I - may have to do with the position of my gauge).
I'm so glad you got rain...and hope that more is on the way!

Sharon

Well, dang. I think Dawn will end up actually beating me on the rainfall total. I got 1.91 inches at the farm and about 1 inch at home. Not what I hoped for, but still really good.

Dawn, I don't know exactly where you are in that little extension of land into Texas, but I hope you are in the part that pulled in another inch plus tonight.

Even though I have ended up on the short end of the stick most times this year, we are still doing OK. Most of the state has had a great summer, at least compared to recent history.

Sharon, That's a wonderful rainfall amount. I hope Lisa got at least that much....you know how it is at her place....her rain gauge probably is overflowing.

Scott, As soon as I posted that we had the thunder and lightning but no rain, the mighty storm hit. They issued a Severe TStorm Warning for us that was in effect from 10:14-10:30 p.m. so obviously it was supposed to be a very fast-moving thunderstorm. Since the storm didn't get the memo that said it had to run through here quickly, it stuck around a while and they eventually extended the warning through 11 p.m.

Light rain turned into steady rain and then, suddenly, into a deluge. First the satellite TV went out. Then we lost power, but only briefly---longer than a surge but probably not but 3 or 4 minutes. Then the internet went out....so all I could do was watch it rain, after I reset all the flashing digital clocks and recalculated the timing for the batch I had in the canner.

Since my rain gauges are in the front and back garden, and it is dark out there....and who knows what creatures lurk out in the dark....we'll wait until tomorrow to see how much more rain fell. It was patchy---I can tell from the radar-indicated rainfall map that some areas of Love County got more than others. Looking out the back door, it looks like we have a lake out there, so I think we did okay.

Scott, We are just about halfway in between Thackerville and Marietta, so I'm guessing roughly the equivalent of the I-35 9 to 9.5 mile marker, and then a little over a mile west of the interstate. The point forecast I use is the one for Bomar, though we are, technically, west of Bomar too.

We had 0.92" in the rain gauge before this last round hit. Burneyville had something like 0.88". Now Burneyville is showing 3.86" (the last time I looked). I'll be happy if we got half as much as they did. We'll find out in the morning.

I agree most of the state has had a great rainfall summer. Even before tonight, I really couldn't complain about the June and July rainfall because some decent rain had fallen. It is just we were in such a rainfall deficit from getting less than 6" from January through the end of May. It is hard to make up that kind of deficit, so no matter how much falls, the soil dries out remarkably quickly afterward. Maybe tonight it finally fell in a sufficient quantity to make some moisture stay in the soil.

It has been cooler than average too. I bet this will be Love County's coolest summer in at least 10 years. We have had a few days where we got compressional heating as a cold front was moving across the state and we've hit 105-108 on those days, but otherwise we mostly have stayed below 100 degrees, and our nights have been really cool. I don't know if we have had an overnight low higher than 80 this whole summer.

Tim is driving home from work and is about to cross over into Oklahoma. He's been driving through heavy rain, so I think "our" thunderstorm is in the Gainesville area now. They flood pretty easily, so I hope this storm is kind to them.

Dawn

Congrats, Dawn.

I'm really glad to hear ya'll got some rain. It seems so relentlessly dry in your areas while I'm busy trying to keep the grass in the front yard presentable from unusual amounts of moisture.

You know, one morning my son mentioned it looked like it rained. It did not. It was condensation. I had to explain to him that dew or condensation was an integral part of the local ecology, but the drought has all but eliminated its reality for several years. Interesting that my children think living with drought symptoms as normal.

Yay!!! Dawn, I am really glad you got some rain. I was feeling very sorry for you.

This morning I had 3.1 in my rain gauge. Technically not overflowing, but enough to make my garden very happy! I am loving this summer. Between last summer and this summer I am going to be completely spoiled.

Lisa

I was feeling sorry for the plants more than for myself, but it is so nice today to not have to worry about when to irrigate next, etc. It has been so dry for so long that irrigating just wasn't helping as much as it should, and I'm not exactly a rookie when it comes to getting a garden through a drought year. Even with lots of watering, some plants (notably cucumber, watermelons and squash in the back garden, though the ones out front are fine) just weren't growing and producing well. I guess they were just sort of clinging to life and producing a little here and there but nothing to get excited about. This rainfall will change that. I am glad I had planted them in both gardens so I could compare their performance in the two different areas. Otherwise, it would have been a poor cuke, melon and squash year here so far.

The garden plants look ridiculously green and happy this morning. Of course the entire property is a mud pit, and we have an inch or two of water in the pond, though I expect it will soak into the ground by tomorrow.

I'm loving the temperatures too. It feels more like October today than late July. I wish the weather wouldn't have to go back to normal summer weather in a couple of days. I'm liking this so much better.

Bon, Isn't it sad? Kids know what they see, though, and prolonged drought is what you kids have been seeing for so long. I get it, though, with our cats. We took in a feral (likely dumped in the country while pregnant) mama cat and kittens in the horrific summer of 2011. When we got some heavy rain in 2012, they all totally freaked out. Why wouldn't they, though? The rainfall was so low and so infrequent in 2011 that they probably never experienced a big, raging thunderstorm with heavy rainfall until the kittens were at least a year old in the spring of 2012. They were so scared they stayed indoors for 3 or 4 days as if the rain was some monster to hide from. I'm the opposite---when we get rain after prolonged dry spells, my inner child wants to go out and splash in the puddles.

It rained on and off all night. I was so excited that I couldn't even fall asleep. I just listened to the rain falling.

For those of you who routinely get a big rainfall day here or there throughout the year, our rainfall amount wouldn't necessary be impressive, but we can go years without having a single-day rainfall over 3", so this was a huge event for us. Most years our rainiest day of the year will be in the upper 2" range, like 2.8 or 2.9.

At our house this morning, we had 3.91" in the rain gauge. Much of that fell before midnight but about an inch fell afterwards. At the Burneyville Mesonet station they have had 5.19", with 4.40" falling yesterday and 0.79" since midnight. The 4.40" would be Burneyville's biggest one-day rainfall total since April 29, 2009.

It has been cloudy, sort of gloomy, misty, foggy, etc. all day and the air is remarkably cool and moist. For today, at least, we can pretend we live in the Pacific Northwest.

I hope that everyone who needed rain got some, and I'd be tickled pink if I could look at next week's U S Drought Monitor and see us moved back from Extreme Drought to Severe Drought. I don't know if the 5.19" recorded at Burneyville is enough to roll back the drought one category, but I think that it might be.

Dawn

Yay Dawn I am so happy for y'all. It missed us except for a sprinkling but we take anything drops big or little. I sure am enjoying the cool
kim

Woo-hoo! Congratulations, Dawn, and everyone! I am so glad for all your plants and animals! We must have been a little too far north to get the real benefit from that storm -- we got 1.2 inches, with a total of 2.2 inches over the whole 2 or 3 days. But even so, we are very thankful. And what an amazing day it was today. I think you would have to go a long way back in history to find a July 31st like the one we had today.

Flis

Kim, I don't think we have had such a pleasant day in July since whatever year it was in the 1990s (96? 97?) that we had a cold, misty fourth of July, so I really enjoyed it too. We lived in Texas then, and it was too wet and chilly to do fireworks---the misty, foggy stuff in the air kept Chris and his cousins from being able to set off their fireworks because you couldn't get them to ignite. They thought it was the worst July 4th ever, but we adults loved the cool weather anyhow. We decided it was too icky to grill food outdoors, so went to the store to buy a rotisserie chicken...and we had to wear windbreakers. That's one of my favorite summer memories....windbreakers in July. This day was just almost as cool and misty as that day was.

The high temp at our house only made it up to 74 this afternoon, and that was after the sun came out around 5 pm. Until then, we had held steady pretty much all day long at 71. I worked in the garden for a few hours, pulling some weeds out of raised beds, deadheading, and harvesting....and I kept feeling like I went to sleep in July last night and woke up this morning in September or October. It was surreal....we never, ever, ever have had a July day like this since moving to Oklahoma in 1999.

I was thinking to myself "so, this is how it feels when you get good rainfall in July"....cause we hardly ever do, and when we do, it isn't necessary accompanied by a cold front.

Flis, I was hoping y'all got more, but 2.2" is pretty darn good too.

I don't know if Love County ever has had a July 31st this pleasant. I know we'll be warmer and sunnier on Aug 1st than we were today, but it still will be relatively cool for August 1st. And I cannot believe it is August tomorrow. Summer flies by so fast. Since the end of July and first couple of weeks of August are usually our hottest weather, and instead we'll have pleasant weather for almost another week, I almost (but not quite) feel like summer is over.

The scary thing, though, is that today I saw itty, bitty, teeny, tiny grasshoppers all over the place. Most were about 1/8" long. Yippee. That's all we needed was another round of grasshoppers. I was hoping the heavy rain washed them downstream.

The zinnias look a foot taller today, and the garden was buzzing with bees. There wasn't even a single thing about today that I didn't like. I even happily mopped up all the muddy pawprints and footprints that were all over the mudroom and kitchen floors by late afternoon, and normally mopping is not high on my list of chores that I enjoy doing.

Dawn

Dawn, this picture is for you:

{{gwi:1117483}}

But it wasn't during this rain, it was taken during my last bike tour. :)

I had 2 2/3 inches in my rain gauge today, when I came home.

The raggedy tomato plants are coming back. Buckwheat is sprouting and the beans and gourds are going wild. I even have a small muskmelon growing. It's a shame I've little experience under awesome summer temps.

Congratulations to Dawn and all others who received a good amount of rain from this last round of storms. It seemed you all must have been on the bottom of the list!

We had anticipated some rain according to the forecast, but it appears as though we were in the donut hole, again. We did get 0.1" for which we are grateful. As I have said before, we even cheer when a bird flies over and p**s....even more so when it is an entire flock of them....LOL.

Dawn, I'm with you about the temps right now. Forecast shows that we won't even reach 90F until middle or so of next week. Of course you know that can change in a second. The cooler temps have felt soooo good that my energy level has ratcheted up a notch or two. Need to go get some diesel to fill the tractor so I can hook up the bush hog and mow some areas that I won't take the riding mower into. Now if the Beefalos would just stay where the weeds are and not go visiting the neighbors down the road or get into the hay stacks, I would almost let them out to graze on those weeds. Actually found someone down on the next section that has 3 Bison - looks like a yearling, bull, and cow. Surprised DH and I when we saw them over the July 4th holiday.

Everyone have a great day and weekend.

Mary

I love watching the Bison. I go to the state park weekly to watch the babies.
This year has been so good here for my garden and seems like all the gifted plants are doing especially well. Everything looked like I had killed it for about 2 weeks and then took off in that first round of rain in the spring. Rain makes me look like a good gardener ;)
iris, daylilies, chives, fennel, big jim, lemon balm, borage, wandering jew, moss rose, mint, thyme, tomatoes, 4 o'clock, and the purple and white hyacinth are crazy this year
Is there anything I should keep the hyacinth away from cuz they pop up all over the yard.

Also I think one of my mystery plantings is zuchetta squash. Leaves are currently as big as a dinner plate and taking over an area not that big. I make have to go vertical with them.
yall enjoy the weekend too!
kim

Moni,

That's a fun photo. A person is never to old to splash in, wade through or even ride a bike through puddles. Everywhere you went on your last bike tour was so, so green and pretty.

I'm glad you found lots of rain in your gauge when you got home from visiting the grandkids.

Bon, Plants that fade and seem near death in very hot and dry weather often rebound beautifully after a cool, wet spell. Just sit back and enjoy it and they'll probably grow well and produce another crop. Here in OK, even in the hottest and driest of summers (which this one is not), we usually get a break in the weather around mid-August and gardens go back into recovery mode if they were struggling. This year it looks like we got our break at the end of July. Certainly August will bring us more heat, but the forecast for the next week looks good so you should see good regrowth of plants that had struggled and your main job is to just watch them for signs of a pest resurgence or diseases.

Mary, Getting rain would have been more fun for me if you'd gotten some too. We've spent too much time in the doughnut hole in recent years and I hate to see you stuck in it now. At least the cooler temperatures make it more pleasant to do the outdoor chores.

I worked in the garden all morning and am a muddy mess and I am going to go back out there and get muddy again in a few minutes. Our high temperature so far today is a beautiful 77 degrees.

It had been so dry here that our vet had seen at least 3 cases of cattle poisoning via the prussic acid in Johnson grass the last time we were in the vet's office, which was either last week or the week before. I am going to assume since everyone who raises cattle knows the risk factors that maybe the livestock escaped from their pasture and grazed somewhere else that they shouldn't have. We've had enough rain on both sides of the Red River now that maybe that won't happen again anytime soon.

Kim, I watch all the wildlife, and of course, here on our land I love to watch the deer. I also love watching the calves, colts, lambs and kids in the fields.

Rain makes us all look like brilliant gardeners. That's why we miss it so much when it doesn't fall. Irrigation water just isn't the same.

I let the hyacinths roam and ramble as they choose, but I have plenty of room. They will absolutely take over everything around them, so if yours are popping up in a place where they could overwhelm nearby plants, you may have to remove them. I've had hyacinth bean vines completely bury 8' tall caged tomatoes underneath their rampant growth. In that case, I allowed the bean vine to stay because the tomato plant was near the end of its productive life and we had enough heat that it wasn't going to set any more fruit any time soon. When a hyacinth bean vine threatens a tomato that is in full production mode, I prune back the bean plant hard or even yank it out.

It is going to be a great weekend here. I don't care what the weather does now....we have enough soil moisture to make the next 7-10 days pretty wonderful.

Dawn

I am glad about the hyacinth. I just let them come up wherever and stick bamboo in the ground for them. I think I have 10 or 12 of those and you are sure right about a tomato cage, two plants tried to swallow one whole and refused to be redirected so I had to cut them out. the rest are just having a good time. I was unsure if they were affecting my tomato plants but I guess its still glyphosate damage. I pulled another one today. the trimming did not work on it either. There was a report in the area that one of the planes got someone's whole garden with the drift. I was sad to hear that.
kim