Yeah.. the weather ... I don't know ... but it's so erratic here. So, feel free to rant next spring. I'm native. When I was reading an author who gardens in Oregan I was amazed. Apparently, in Oregon the difficulty is getting the ground worked and the garden started before the spring rains, because the ground will be wet well into the growing season and unable to be worked.

while I empathize with her manipulating under the weather behavior, I was shocked that it was that predictable.

and another online friend in NZ was complaining about a "drought" and having to hand water twice in one week. I thought, "They don't need to water or irrigate? That's incredible!"

And they plant the tomato seeds right in the ground in spring. Imagine that!!!

LOL

bon

Since you have been here since June you have experienced most of the weather conditions except the ice storms. This summer we had rain all summer and last summer we had a couple of months when it was very dry. It will vary from year to year, but we normally get good rainfall for most of the year. I didn't have a real garden this year, but I had cucumbers, peppers, and a few tomatoes and beans. I only watered twice.

The Mesonet says that our station has had 43.57 inches so far this year, so we may get a little more than normal.

Sorie, I love the weather and climate here, and I agree that the sunsets and sunrises often are stupendously beautiful. On the other hand, I hate the weather too. It definitely is possible to both love and hate our weather because our climate gives us some spectacularly beautiful weather but also some incredibly challenging weather.

When we first moved here from Texas, some of our Texas friends teased us and said "they only have two seasons there---Winter for a few weeks and Summer for the rest of the year". That's not really true. Oklahoma truly does have all four seasons, but sometimes it can seem like we have all 4 of them in the same week.

The tricky part of the spring weather is that sometimes (at least here in southcentral OK where I live and I assume many other parts of OK have similar weather) we can have deceptively warm weather in February (some years even in January) and it gets warm enough that everything starts blooming and greening up too early and then freezes when more seasonable temperatures return. One year we hit the 90s in February although in general a more typical 'hot' February day would be in the 70s or 80s.

The danger as I am sure you're well aware lies in the way that various weather systems collide over Oklahoma in the spring and early summer. While tornadoes (and rightfully so due to the devastation they cause) get most of the media attention, at least from media outside the state of OK, most residents will suffer far more damage from the frequent hail storms and wind storms, and from the all-too-frequent flash flooding. I can only think of a couple of times when a member of this forum has had their home, outbuildings or garden, or any combination thereof, damaged or destroyed by a tornado, but anyone here who's been gardeninghere for any length of time has had damage from hail (sometimes up to baseball-to-softball sized), flash flooding, wind storms, microbursts and ice storms. I love it when snow is in the forecast, but sleet and freezing rain are just flat out frightening when forecast because they cause so much more disruption in one's daily life and so much damage to homes, plants and vehicles.

Carol, You know, if I look at our Mesonet station's total rainfall for the year, it would look like we've had a fairly good year. The issue for us hasn't been how much rain has fallen, but just the fact that for a couple of months during the summer, practically nothing fell. And, the same is true of spring---we had very little rain in January through April at our house, but lots of it in May and June. I would love to live someplace (if such a place exists) where rain falls at a consistent rate every month, but that's never going to happen because we have no plans to leave Oklahoma. There's also the issue that a lot of get rainfall amounts that vary greatly from what is recorded at the county's mesonet station or stations.

Sorie, There are places outside of Oklahoma, and likely many of them, where you can find beautiful spring and fall weather, fairly mild winters, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets. However, I don't think you can find another state with as many wonderful people as we have here. The people here in this state are so kind, friendly, loving and giving. I've noticed that no matter who you are or where you live in Oklahoma, when you need help from your neighbors and community, there always is an incredible response. People here literally will give you the shirt off their back or the last dollar in their pocket, and they don't expect anything in return. That's pretty special.

I've noticed that whenever anyone in our local county has a crisis, whether the crisis is that their house burned down or they've been diagnosed with a catastrophic illness or whatever, the people here will immediately set up fundraisers or even a series of fundraisers to help the affected family, and I don't mean just one. It isn't all about the fundraising, either. They will mow someone's yard for months or years while that person is fighting a life-threatening illness, or go feed and look after the cattle of someone who's had a heart attack and is in the hospital, or they'll press money into the hand of someone who had an unexpected death and is scrambling to pay for funeral costs. I feel like Oklahomans have the biggest hearts in the world. The quality of the people here is one of the things that makes living here so special to me.

Dawn