I just came in from trying to harvest a few things and found that the corn had been popped , the potatos baked and the chickens were laying poached eggs.

I don't know about the poached eggs, Punkin, but I feel like a moderately roasted gardener, that's for sure. I haven't gone to collect eggs, but they may be hard-broiled by now, if there are any there, which I doubt.

My next question is, if it was supposed to be 102 today and it's 114 instead, what's it going to do all next week, when it's also supposed to be 102-103???

Pat

Ouch. We had almost two weeks of higher than 110 degree wether that just recently broke. Take care of those chickens, lots of AZ folks lost theirs. Our hottest day was 118 at the airport which means I was probably 121.
I lost one baby chick but that's because I moved them on a hot day and they piled up in their carrier instead of seeking out the cooler parts of their new run. I don't know why I didn't wait until early the next morning to move them, guess I was tired of having chicks in the house, after two batches back to back.

Tracy,

We found one chicken dead yesterday morning, and I've been doing all I can to keep them cool. Their coop and run are in almost full shade and don't get much direct sunlight. I would think they had the coop been in full sun, we would have lost more than the one chicken.

Pat,

The NWS has been way off on our forecasts too, although we've generally been going only 3 to 7 degrees higher than forecast. Now, every day I look at the NWS forecast for my part of the county and mentally add 5 degrees to whatever their forecast shows for our forecasted high temp.

PunkinheadJones, We went through all that stuff last year too. We thought it was snowing outside, but it turned out it was just the corn popping. This is the first time I've been able to roast tomatoes and peppers while they're still on the plants.

Dawn

Just FYI... It's blasphemy for me to say this, but I've been keeping track of different weather forecasting avenues, and as much as I hate to say it, weather.com has been the most accurate. NWS has been the least accurate, and my local news affiliates have been somewhere in the middle. On weather.com, just type your zip and look at the ten day. Has given me a much more accurate forecast. Just sayin. Of course, I still look at all every morning in the hopes that someone will blow a little sunshine (you know where) to keep me going.

Taira

Dawn, I'm sorry to hear you lost a chicken in the heat. Ours are all free-range, so they can roam around and try to find a spot where they're most comfortable.
What they usually do is huddle in the shade against the back of the house, where they seem to get some cooling benefit from the A/C ducts. There's an opening in the foundation there, and I think some of them even go under the house. It's probably the coolest spot on the property, be far.
If we had chicks that we needed to keep penned up, I would want to bet on their chances of survival. It's simply way too hot.

Last evening I noticed that even the fresh blossoms on the crape myrtle are wilted. I've never seen that happen before. The lantana are drooping in the heat, and even the peppers were in sad shape. What little grass is left in the pastures is brown and crunchy. I just hope it cools off a bit.

Pat

Dawn, can you put a fan on your coop? My jumbo crosses have taken to wading in big dog bowls full of water. I think, when I get the new coop done, I'm going to put a nice misting system and fans up for them. Right now, I just have a fan on the chicks but everybody is getting wading pools and damp bedding stations.
I just saw the official reading for our hottest day last week. 121, a new high record. Ugh! Lots of people around here were losing chickens, too.
I was so worried about my chicks last night because we had a huge storm roll in after bedtime and I have them in a little dog pen with no shelter. All they have are bed sheets to cover the pen.Why would they need shelter, no rain for the past 130 days or more, lol! I had to run out there and give them a cardboard box, which of coarse they didn't want to stay in. I was out there in a lightening storm, pouring rain, trying to force twenty little chicks to stay in the cardboard box.
The older bantams were much more cooperative and seemed thankful when I put them in a box. I let the jumbos stay out in the rain, figured they would enjoy being cool for a change.
I was sure I'd have a batch of dead chicks this morning but

Pat, Ours used to free range all day every day but the bobcats and cougars put a halt to that a couple of summers ago. They can free range when I'm home, but lately I'm leaving several times a day for fires and other VFD business, so there's no one here to watch over them.

Tracy, We have a fan in the coop. The coop is in full shade most of the day and dappled shade for an hour or so. It is the coolest outdoor space we have which is why the coop is there, other then deep in the dark parts of the woods which is an unsuitable location since that's where the predators live. I refill their waters with fresh cool water a couple of times a day. I turn on the sprinkler and water their coop and chicken run. i have a mister. I don't know what else to do for them. The heat is brutal. I think the worst part is that it doesn't cool off much at night.

I think I'll try putting a wading pool in there for them. They don't normally get into water like that, but it wouldn't hurt to try it. I wish I could let them free range more, but between the fire risk and the predators, it is too risky right now. Because of the location of their coop, they are relatively safe from fire. It's surrounded by green grass on all 4 sides, except where they've repeatedly dust bathed while free-ranging and it is bare soil there, and is the farthest place we have from any open grassland. Hopefully if (and it probably is a matter of when, not if) we have a grassfire nearby, I'll be close enough to the house to put out a sprinkler along the edge of our property closest to the coop so I can keep the flames away from them. We're burning up (literally) here.

At the house fire that kept us out most of the night Friday night, there were dogs left alone at the house while their owners were on vacation, and we could tell by the number of feed bowls and water bowls on the porch that there were several. We were extremely concerned for their welfare and feared they had perished in the fire as the house was fully engulfed and the roof had already collapsed before firefigters arrived. This house is set back so far off the roadway and so far from the nearest neighbor I'm surprised anyone even saw the fire and called to report it. Finally, one bassett hound came crawling out from under a vehicle parked a safe distance from the house. It obviously had barely escaped the fire, having suffered burns on various parts of its body. The homeowner's son arrived at the home early, before sunrise, to feed the dogs that morning, and by then our firefighters had found the other two dogs, which were chained up (and hiding, and lying low) beind the shed. They were fine, but the fire only missed them by a few feet. Seeing that poor burnt dog (the son took it to the vet for burn treatment) made me think hard about how best to protect our animals from grassfires and wildfires. You think you'll be at home to protect them and evacuate them if need be, but that's not always the case.

I'm glad your chicks survived the storm....and do you realized you ever so casually mentioned pouring rain and then didn't tell us how much rain you had? C'mon, brag a little and tell us all about the rain. It must have been wonderful!

I think we'll see more horrendous record temps before this summer ends, and who knows what else will happen as a result of the heat. Our medics have been running on a lot of heat illness calls and I consider us fairly cool (only 107 yesterday) compared to many parts of the state. At least our humidity is so low that usually by early afternoon, our heat index is a degree or two lower than our air temp, so that helps somewhat. It has felt cooler here all day! I don't even know if we've hit 100 yet.

Dawn

I honestly don't know how much rain we had! It was a lot, maybe 3/4 of an inch to an inch. I don't have a rain gauge, since we don't get rain in measurable amounts all that often. I think that cloud just stopped right on top of us because the official amount was 0.02 inches. I know all the barrels I have on our gutters were nearly full.
I was working outside this morning and found a two inch praying mantis, put him on the long beans so that he could get his fill of aphids.
I saw on the backyard chicken forum somebody had big blocks of ice in their chicken brooder with their newly hatched chickens instead of a heat lamp. Now when have you ever seen that?
Actually, quite a few people around here made it through the weekend by putt king bags and blocks of ice out for their chickens. Some people even have swamp coolers or window AC units on their coops. People in Scottsdale with urban chickens can get a little wackadoo at times, lol!

Okay, you guys. Talking about rain is just not fair! I think we've gotten all of maybe 3 drops in I don't know how many weeks. I'm envious.

I just came in from filling the water trough again. It sits in the shade of the apple tree, so it isn't too bad, but I found it was way too hot for me to stay out in the sun to do anything else. The 'official' temp on the NOAA site says it's 104, but I've got news for them. My thermometer reads 109, and climbing.

I've been wetting down the soil all around the watering trough, and all the animals like to go in and lie down there. The chickens get right in with the sheep. The little breeze is helping to keep it tolerable, although I'd hate to think what the temperature is in our big metal-roof chicken runs. I just leave the doors open so the birds can come and go at will and get in to roost at night.
Usually the sheep like to go into the empty pens and lie down in the shade, but not any more. They are all out, lying under the trees where it's a bit cooler. We do have the Katahdin breed that shed out their wool in the summer, so it's both good and bad. They don't have to contend with the wool but they don't have the insulation it offers either. A Catch-22 situation.

Even our parrot is sitting in his cage here in the A/C saying "want a bath".

Pat

The weather from Tulsa tonight said that Grove was 106 with a HI of 110. I took a nap.

113 and climbing on my hill in Jenks. My hostas are white and transparent despite constant watering. My small 4-5' evergreen trees are looking distinctly yellow despite being watered 20 minutes EACH (times 20) every other day. Uncle. I give up. Oklahoma can bite my butt. I am just going to grow cacti and tumbleweeds from now on.

Jo

Well, our excitement for the day was when the water went out and I was afraid I had either fried the pump or run the well dry. When the A/C until failed also, we knew it was a much larger problem. It seems that what was fried was the entire main circuit box for the property. It literally melted the breakers and the power company line that leads into it. On a Sunday, night, naturally nothing could be done. The electrical company we called said that it has been such a common problem in this heat that most of their drivers are carrying the parts on the trucks. Unfortunately, ours was a bit more extreme. We have to call the utility company in the morning and have them repair the damage to their lives before we can even begin to fix the problems on our end of it. At least a talented neighbor was able to come over and jury-rig it enough that we now have the water and A/C back on, and the refrig and freezer are running again. That's an enormous relief.
The bad news is that a best-case guesstimate to fix it will start at $600, and probably go up from there..

Are we having fun yet?

Pat

Pat, I'm so sorry to hear that! Glad you got some temporary relief, though. Hey, I'm not electrician but could all of that have spelled a serious fire hazard? But I don't know electrical stuff very well.

Absolutely a potential fire hazard! I suppose we're lucky that it wasn't any worse. We have to have the power company come out and set new lines today, and then have the electrician set a new box to go with it. I have a terrible feeling we're going to be without power for several hours, at least. I have extreme asthma and the heat does not do kind things to me, so I hope they don't take too long with the transition.

Pat

Pat- we had a power outage the day we were 121 degrees as well. In fact, it was a major brown-out in Mesa, with 80,000 people without power for 4 hours. Apparently all the Home Depots, Lowes and Walmarts sold out of generators and they were all returned the next day. I really can't believe people would stoop so low as to buy generators to use for their temporary comfort and then return them, but than, my ex-husband did that sort of stuff all the time, I just thought he was "special" that way.
Hate to brag but we had more rain last night! I think maybe another 1/2 inch to an inch, as my rain barrels were overflowing once again! I'm going to have to buy some mosquito fish for my barrels at this rate, lol!

The repairman from the utility company came out this morning to evaluate the situation. It seems that they will have to run all new line from the pole, replace their big transformer and all the lines back to the main junction as well. One that's done, we need to install a new main breaker below the meter and it should all be fixed and ready to go. The electrician we called has quoted a cost of $1,500 to replace the breaker alone.

There are times when I could wish I were a drinking person. A good stiff shot of something right now might be comforting. I'm just joking, of course, but . . . Add that to the $10,000 estimate we got to replace the barn roof (which I had planned to turn into a greenhouse) and it just keeps going up, and up, and up.

Still, I can always think of what the original settlers had to face when they came in and began to clear this land and start farms on it. Tractors and power tools didn't exist for them, there were no wells, and they certainly couldn't turn on a fan or set the thermostat. Just lots of fertile land to be cleared, and a whole bunch of it in clay soil. Those Sooners were a tough, hardy and resilient bunch, weren't they?! It sort of helps me put things in perspective.

Pat