Our friends in Burleson TX, just outside Fort Worth, emailed and said they got 2.52 inches yesterday, and as of about 11:30 this morning were at 11.75 inches total since yesterday. At one point they got over an inch in 50 minutes. They said it is now beginning to fall in spurts of heavy rain, then light, versus just solid heavy rain so they have probably seen the worst of it. Personally I'm happy that its tracking a little eastward now instead of straight at Oklahoma City, because our daughter's flight is scheduled to arrive at 9 pm tonight from Seattle and don't want her to have to sit in an airport in Phoenix if the flight can't get in here. But I'm thrilled that many parts of the state will (hopefully) begin to get out of the drought pattern!!

Suzie

Suzie,

I'm glad we don't have that 11+" here. Been there, done that, and it isn't fun.

We have had recurring bands here, some light and some heavy. At our house we're in a 'lull' between bands now and I have poured 4.75" out of our rain gauge. We've had a few motor vehicle accidents in our part of the county which gave our firefighters a chance to evaluate local roadways. They tell me another inch or two and we'll start having flooding at low-water crossings. There's already minor ponding of water in some low roadways.

The D-FW metro area is a mess with scattered flash flooding and high-water rescues all over the place. The areas between the D-FW area and the Red River are having issues too. We should be good on our side of the river if we only get a little more rain. I don't expect flooding on roadways here unless we get more than a couple more inches.

The highest rainfall totals on the Texas side of the river near us is about 9" at Forestburg.

I hope your daughter is able to fly in on time from Phoenix.

Dawn

Suzie, I hope your daughter gets in safely too!

HOWEVER, could we push some of that rain back into OKC? :) We need it here too. The pitiful amount that has fallen so far is just enough to be misery not helpful.

Lisa

Dawn and Lisa,
Thanks ... she did arrive safely and her flight was only delayed about 20 minutes, however somehow her luggage ended up in Arkansas! It's strange how that happens when you board a flight in Seattle that stops in Salt Lake City and Phoenix before reaching Oklahoma City. Oh well, it's just great to have her home safe!

Lisa, I know what you mean about the amount that has fallen so far, especially after the forecasters said we might get 3 to 6 inches. We did get about an inch and a half here in SW Logan County according to the Mesonet maps, and that was mostly slow, soaking rainfall. It's nice to see it but it probably won't have that much of an impact on those big cracks in the ground.

Dawn, the CBS station here in OKC showed live video of a tornado in Dallas during the 6 pm news. We never heard any more about whether there was any damage or not. It looks like they had a pretty rough day down there!

Suzie

Lisa,

I hope more rain fell there.

I have an apology to make. I am sorry. Apparently all the OKC rain fell here at my house. We are standing at 9.1" as of about midnight last night, and light rain is falling now.

If you'll tell me where to send the excess moisture, I'll box it up and FedEx it to you right away.

Seriously, why in the world do we go for two or three months with only the most minimal rainfall, and then we get 2 or 3 months worth of rain in a 2-day period? Mother Nature must be having hormonal issues, because she sure is behaving in an erratic manner.

Suzie,

There's only one 'problem' in the world that physicists haven't figured out yet and for which no one has the solution. The problem? How luggage ends up in the most bizarre places. Well, it does, doesn't it....defying logic at times to do so. As you probably know, my DH has been a police officer at D-FW Airport for almost 29 years and he never checks his luggage when he flies if he can avoid it...he knows better!

Dallas and the entire metro area had a horrible day yesterday. In Arlington, one apartment complex called "The Willows" flooded so quickly that the fire dept. had to evacuate people off the rooftops of their flooded apartment buildings. I just can't imagine water coming up that quickly, and I can't help but chuckle at the name 'The Willows' because we all know how willows love water and sprout in wet spots.

For once, DH and DS were both off work and at home in Love County for all the weather yesterday. That was a good thing. Usually they're gone and I'm home alone and having to send them constant text messages about threatening weather as I huddle in the tornado shelter, surrounded by spiders, jars of pickles and the year's potato harvest. This time they were home for all the fun and games. In fact, DS was out storm spotting west of our house and spotted the tornado attempting to touch down right at the river about 1/4 mile north of our back property line. When all the local storm spotters and traveling storm chasers were rushing to our street and neighborhood to spot the funnel clouds, I was in the tornado shelter thinking to myself that those folks (including my son) take risks I'd never take.

Dawn

Glad to hear you all are getting some rain and that the tornado missed you Dawn. I watch that TV program sometimes showing the storm chasers and wonder at their sanity.

Our rains here began about l AM this morning and it's still coming down lightly. DH tells me it is supposed to pick up along with 40mph winds. I hope the winds miss us. This rain will probably make this the wettest September on record for our area.....if it happens as they predict.

Don't you wish we could store all this excess someway (like former President Bush does at his Texas home).

Dawn, I'm glad you got a lot of rain, now your ponds will have water again! The mesonet says we got 2 plus inches. I can't quite read the rain gauge from here, but that's probably pretty close. We could use just another inch or two :) Feel free to address that box to "The Village, Oklahoma". LOL

Suzie, I'm glad she made it! I hope she didn't have to pay for that luggage going elsewhere! You'd think if we have the pleasure of paying extra to bring luggage, they could get it there!

We were at Love Field twice on Sunday. When they said the tornado was on Mockingbird Lane I knew instantly where that was. I'm glad it didn't happen on Sunday :) I haven't heard too much about the damage, but it looked fairly small.

Lisa

Glad the tornado didn't touch down on your place, Dawn. And sorry about the luggage, Suzie. DH and I fly to the West Coast every couple years and always take only carry on luggage. Even if we weren't staying with relatives with laundry facilities, we would take carry on and find a laundramat. Of course not everyone can do that. We usually only stay a week or so.

As of this morning we had 4.5" in the gauge, all but 1/4" of that falling overnight. Still time for a fall garden and now enough moisture in the soil. The lettuce, radishes, turnips, bok choy, and mustard that we planted last Fri after last week's rain are all up. But most of the Chinese Cabbage I planted disappeared the morning after I planted it. Striped blister beetles found it. Drat them anyway! Still have a dozen plants in the starter tray so DH is going to build a screened frame to put them under.

It's still raining and slowly enough to soak in. Hope everybody gets as much as they need.

Glenda,

I worry about the storm spotters as I'm listening to them on the local emergency scanner. It always amazes me that a few folks will go out and position themselves in the path of the storm in order to provide warnings to the rest of us.

Storm chasers are a different breed of folks. I think of them as adrenalin junkies. They were racing around all over our county last night.

These were little piddly tornadoes. You know, they came down looking more like one of those water spouts you see in Florida, so think and weak. Still, even a thin and weak tornado has the potential to grow and do some damage.

So far, for the month of September, our Mesonet station has recorded a bit over 8", but at our house we've had a bit over 12". I don't know how that ranks with other wet Septembers, but it is the wettest one we've had here since moving here in 1999.

I hope all your rainfall is kind and gentle and doesn't bring any severe, damaging stuff with it.

The first rainfall collection system I ever saw was at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin in the 1990s. I've wanted a system like that ever since. Maybe one day I'll have one. Yesterday's rains overwhelmed my rain barrels....but they all are full so I've got about 450 gallons caught in rain barrels, trash cans and every 5 gallon bucket that wasn't full of dirt and holding plants.

Lisa, I had been sitting and watching The Weather Channel's coverage of the problems in Texas and was seeing raw, unedited footage of the Mockingbird Rd. damage when our local warnings and storm spotter reports started hitting. That probably made me take our local funnel cloud blitz more seriously.

Dorothy, Thanks. It was very close. When the storm spotters on in the road in front of your house, that's a good time to sit in the cellar, and that is what I did.

That's a nice healthy amount of rainfall.

Those darned blister beetles! I wish we had some here this year because they eat grasshopper eggs. Other than that, they are so damaging I don't like having them around.

I'm getting to the point that I wish we could build screened boxes to put over every bed. We may actually do it with the broccoli and cabbage beds next year.

Dawn

Dawn, I didn't have much trouble with the broccoli, but I wish I had a screen house for squash, and berries. This year, even the green beans took a beating from the Japanese beatles. The JB's even eat okra leaves, but the plants don't seem to be bothered much by the damage. If the bugs get any worse, we will need to garden in a screen house. Wonder how much you could grow in a walk-in 10x12 screen house? We need a greenhouse or high tunnel to fight weather issues, and a screen house to fight insect issues. Is gardening getting harder?

Dawn, I didn't know anyone else saved rain in trash barrels. I also have Tuff Stuff black stock tanks under the barn drips. They would not be safe with little children around and leaves can blow in them, but they work for me. My biggest one is 300 gallons. The down side is you get tadpoles and can't use their water.

Carol,

There are times that I think gardening is getting harder, but then I think maybe I wouldn't feel that way if I'd lived through the insect plagues and droughts of the 1920s and 1930s or the long drought-plagued 1950s.

It sure does seem like our mid-spring weather has become more erratic, with late freezes popping up later and later and making it hard to plant 'on time' and almost impossible to plant early.

Pests are another issue. Some years there are just so many of them. This year there were huge numbers of them in Texas and Oklahoma, and other states as well. So, it was not a random increase in insect population cycles here and there....it was widespread. What does that mean? I have no idea. We've always had pest populations that cycle up and down but the last five years the 'up' cycles seem more extreme.

I wish I could enclose my big garden in a giant screenhouse, but I think that if I told Tim I wanted a 100' x 100' screenhouse, he'd have me admitted to a psychiatric hospital for a mental evaluation.

So, we muddle along the best we can and deal with each weather challenge and each pest challenge as it arises, and I don't know what else we can do.

Sometimes you can do everything right and have nothing to show for it because Mother Nature bats last. For example, my sweet potato bed is as gorgeous as can be and I am hoping for a bumper crop. Based on prior experience, though, I expect big trouble now because the sweet potatoes cannot be happy with the 12.5" of rain that have fallen here since Sept. 1st. I'm likely to have issues with them now even though they've behaved and grown perfectly until now.

Helen, I think trash cans are great for catching rainfall coming off the roof of the barn. When a big storm is coming, I take their lids off so they can catch rainfall. I also set out all the 5 gallon buckets to catch rain running off the front of the barn where the garage doors are and then I dump that water into two big trash cans and two big wading pools, since I can't leave them there blocking the garage doors.

One of these days I hope to have a big row of those trash cans across the entire back of the barn to catch a lot more rainfall.

I don't have tadpole issues in any of my containers because we have 5 ponds and the frogs flock to them. All my ponds are full again after being empty (except for the lily pond I keep filled with the water hose) for months.

Last night, though, the entire yard was a lake after 2" fell in less than an hour and the frogs were all over the yard just hopping around. It seemed like they were 'playing' in the water. Then, they sang and croaked all night and all morning long until the sun came out and it started getting really hot here.

I do put Bt 'israelensis' mosquito-killing granules in my containers to keep skeeters from hatching in the trash cans and buckets and wading pools.

Dawn

Dawn, Maybe the water will just soak in so fast that the sweet potatoes won't be harmed. We didn't get the kinds of rain that most of you got, but I think we got almost two inches over the 2 day period. The two counties below ours got heavy rain, but this time we were the one in the donut hole. Twice the amount would have been nice, but I am grateful for what I got and maybe all of those pepper blooms will now make peppers and bless me with a big fall harvest. I am glad that I froze some early in the season because the late summer was not nearly as productive.

I normally get a good crop in the fall. I let the chickens in the garden for a few days and they loved being under the pepper plants. They dug in the dirt and generally cleared the ground of insects and such. The only problem was that they wanted something green so badly that they ate the leaves as far up the plants as they could reach. So all of my peppers have been pruned and hopefully scared into production. LOL

I dumped the containers from tomato growing into a large pot so I could grow something different in it next year. I left it sitting too close to a pepper plant and the chickens jumped up in it and used it for a ladder to clean the high leaves that they couldn't reach from the ground.
They got spoiled in the spring and early summer because I always had something green to give them. When I started apples, they would follow me for the peels and apple cores at first, but after about 40 pounds of apples, they just left them laying on the ground. Too much of a good thing, I guess.

I only ended up with 1" in the bucket but it was an all day slow soaker.
I'll take it!

Keith

Here in NE Norman, we ended up with 2 and 3/4 inches in my skinny rain gauge, but my above ground pool says different. We ran the "waste" cycle on it for over an hour last evening just to keep it from overflowing so I know we discharged over 4 inches of water. Wish there was another use for it but even using lithium chloride instead of sodium choride, it isn't good for plants...so we channel to be a grass & weed killer in the patio areas.

Sadly, we could still use more rain. Just not all at once!

Paula

P.S. - Dawn, sent you an e-mail.

Carol,

I hope the sweet potatoes don't crack and split...or get tough and stringy. Time will tell. It just figures we'd have massive rainfall in a September when I have 60 beautiful, gorgeous sweet potato plants growing like mad. We've never had a massive rainfall (we ended up with 9.3" when you added the light rain that fell early this morning) in September....that's usually an April sort of thing.

I bet your peppers will make fruit like mad now that rain has fallen and temps have cooled a little. I always have a great fall pepper crop, even in years when they've produced so well all summer that I think they ought to be tired and worn out like I am.

Keith,

I was hoping y'all would get a good rainfall like I did. On the other hand, you didn't have to spend an hour cowering in your tornado cellar while funnel clouds danced in the skies over your neighborhood. This was the closest the funnels have come to us in years, but the ones that touched down only touched down for seconds and they touched down in open countryside.

Oh, Carol, if you see this....Lone Grove apparently had a small tornado touch down...I think it was on Prairieview Dri. or something similar. I saw footage on the news tonight and it tore up at least one house quite a bit, but was nothing like the Feb. tornado a couple of years ago.

Paula, Well, whether you got 2 3/4" or 4", at least you received a good rainfall.

I received your e-mail and sent you one in return.

And, in case y'all are wondering: Did 9.3" fill up the ponds and close up the cracks in the land? Yes, yes, yes. Every pond we have is as full as it can be....even the 'overflow' pond that catches the overflow from the big pond. The 'overflow' pond is so full that it rose high enough to run through its own overflow valve which channels water into what is normally a dry creek bed about 90% of the time. That mostly dry creekbed carries the water to our big creek. Our big creek is high and running fast. The cracks in the ground are almost completely closed up. Even our swamp is swampy again!

Yesterday after we had received the first 5" or so, I checked the cracks and they were still there, but were full of standing water so I figured once that standing water was absorbed into the nearby soil, the cracks would close. Then the tornadic cell arrived and dumped over 2" per hour and the cracks closed right up. We have ponds and puddles where none existed, but even they have mostly drained into the soil today. I was worried they'd sit there a few days like they do in the spring, but I guess the dry ground slurped up that moisture hungrily.

I betcha we have fire ants and snakes all over the place and mosquitoes too by about Sunday or Monday. That's alright, though, because we finally have good soil moisture.

In a couple of days, after the soil moisture maps have updated from this week's rain, I'll post them and we can gaze at them in awe. I think for most people, at least at the 2" and 10" level, they'll look great for this time of year. Already, the KBDI maps reflect a huge change and next week the U. S. Drought Monitor map will too.

I am glad I hadn't planted grass seed or anything because with all the rain we received, that would have been a waste. Also based on past experience, the wildflowers that went dormant this summer will revive quickly and start blooming like mad. That's great for the wild things.

Maybe another tropical system will send us (well, lol, y'all, but not me!) more rain in a couple of weeks. I know that 'Igor' is out there in the northern Atlantic although he's still miles and miles from anywhere. Invest 92L is also trying to develop into a tropical depression and it might come our way. You never know....this seems to be a year for tropical storms to hit the Mexico/Texas coast and send plumes of moisture up through Texas and Oklahoma. Often, a pattern like that repeats itself several times even when the storms don't strengthen enough to become named Tropical Depressions, Tropical Storms or Hurricanes. I always watch the tropical weather closely in late summer and early fall because that's often where our drought-busting rains come from. To me, 'Igor' sounds like he could be an evil storm system, based on name alone! (With apologies to any nice guys named Igor who are reading this.)

One of the funny things about a big rain event is that it distorts reality....anyone looking at my year-to-date rainfall would get the idea that we breezed through the summer with a lot of rain. We didn't though. The 5" we received over several rainy days in July and the 12.3" we received in Sept. over a one week period are nice, but it isn't the same thing as getting an inch or two every week.

And, sad to say, but this kind of rain often makes the eventual winter wildfire season worse and not better. Why? A huge burst of late summer or early autumn rain causes any native plants still alive to grow like crazy. Then, a frost hits, they winter-kill, and we have tons of dead foliage just waiting to burn. That's exactly what happened in 2005. For those of us in areas that are very heavy on prairie grassland, it really is better if the heavy rains don't fall until Nov. or Dec. when everything is already dormant.

Dawn

I know it's really off-topic, but since there were several comments about our daughter's luggage ending up in Arkansas, I thought I'd let you know the latest. She got a phone call at 9:30 this morning and her bag was already at the OKC airport. Here's the good news .... she had a choice of having it delivered, or receiving a $50 voucher toward another flight. She chose the voucher and we drove down and picked up the luggage. That's a big savings for her towards her next trip home.

I'm glad to hear so many received a nice rainfall. I think we got about 2 inches here by the time it was all finished. One of the birdbaths that was completely dry is full to the brim today. It really does look like some of that brown crunchy grass is already showing some signs of green this evening. Is it possible for it to green up that fast?

Dawn, I'm so glad that tornado didn't come any closer to your house! What a crazy day!

Suzie

Suzie,

The $50 voucher is a pretty good deal!

Yes, you can see green-up pretty fast, especially if the storm contained a lot of lightning because the lightning releases nitrogen into the air.

We often see the start of green-up in less than six hours after a major rainstorm, and within a couple of days, total green-up. It is amazing. Often, in a very hot year like this, the spring wildflowers went dormant prematurely and they'll regrow/rebloom in the fall. It is odd to see something like Indian Paintbrush or Meadow Pinks blooming in Sept. or Oct. instead of April or May, but it happens almost every time drought shuts them down so early. It will be interesting to see what the wildflowers do here in response to the heavy rain.

Dawn

Dawn: I planted grass seed, so I was rather relieved we didn't have massive amounts of rainfall :) I think my yard ended up with 1.5 inches, which is pretty perfect for the grass seed. I noticed this morning that there's a string of 20 percent chances of rain for the next week, hopefully there will be a little bit more in there.

Congrats on all the full ponds!

Lisa

Lisa, I am glad it didn't rain really hard there since you got your fescue grass sed out.

The full ponds are wonderful, and the frogs think so too. With all the croaking, singing and carrying on out there, I think maybe the frogs are confused and think it is the spring mating season. They are so loud at night that you can't sleep with the windows open. It is rare that the frogs are this deliriously happy in September.

Dawn

Dawn,
You are an amazing wealth of knowledge and you never cease to amaze me! I'd never heard anything about lightning releasing nitrogen into the air .... that is really interesting. The grass is even greener today than yesterday, what a welcome sight. I've also noticed some trees are getting that spring green color again, and yesterday I saw some bradford pear trees blooming! I've seen that in the past and didn't understood it, but recalling what you said a couple of weeks ago about how trees handle stress by beginning to go dormant, that would explain blooms in September following the stress they have experienced.

Suzie

Suzie,

I read about the lightning-nitrogen connection many years ago and don't remember all the details, but it seems that the lightning helps fix the nitrogen, which exists in water and in a gas form, in such a way that the plants can absorb it. I never understood though if the plants are absorbing the nitrogen from the air or from the raindrops themselves.

As for the blooming we see after drought.....plants don't really understand the difference between dormancy caused by the shorter daylengths and cooler weather of autumn/winter versus dormancy caused by a severe lack of rainfall. So, they respond to any dormancy by going through the bloom cycle again. It is interesting to me that they'll bloom again in spring anyway despite the fall bloom. The first time most people notice the post-drought blooming, they find it quite peculiar because they haven't thought of a drought period as a dormancy period for the plants. It also explains why plants that people thought died during drought will 'come back'....because they weren't dead, just dormant. Nature is endlessly fascinating.

Dawn