It's 11 here. My coffee cup almost formed ice in it on the way to the greenhouse a few minutes ago. :-)

randy

It went down to 13 here and we're expecting it to be a little colder than that tonight.

The potted brugs in the garage still haven't frozen, but they're dropping leaves because I am leaving them inside so much to keep 'em warm. They're still blooming, but we'll probably move them to the tornado shelter tonight before sunset, and I imagine we'll leave them there the rest of the winter and let them go dormant. This is the latest I've had them in bloom without bringing them into the house.

Dawn

I don't know for sure how cold it is here, but it is definitely COLD!!!

One of my floor heaters is not working so I am running a space heater in my kitchen to keep the pipes from freezing. This afternoon I think it ran non-stop.

Lisa

Lisa,

Sorry to hear the floor heater is not working.....it picked a fine time to stop, didn't it? It is 4:35 a.m. and I just checked the Mesonet, which shows a current temperature of 13 for OKC, and it shows the temp has dropped 1 degree in the last 3 hours, so it was 14 when you posted. Brrrr!

We were supposed to get down to the 10-14 range, and I was expecting the worst here in our low-lying location along the river, so I was thrilled to see that our Mesonet station says 22. (Our back porch thermometer says 25.) Usually, when the forecasters are wrong, we are colder than they say it will be, so it is nice to be warmer for once. I saw a lot of 5, 6 and 7 degree readings in northeastern OK a minute ago and those folks may dip down very close to zero before the sun rises.

All I can say is that at least we've had our shortest day of the winter now, so every day will be a little longer than the day before....and before we know it, it will be March and we'll be out in the yards and gardens more. Hopefully, we'll see a warming trend for the rest of the week 'cause this cold stuff is for the polar bears, not us.

Dawn

Dawn,

It bottomed out at 8 here about midnight. Then skyrocketed up to 12 after the wind shifted from north to east. I would have been putting on suntan lotion if it were daylight. :-)

randy

I just heard on the news, it is -27° in Minot South Dakota. BURRRRRRRR, that is cold. I was out, and saw 14°. That is plenty cold for me. I wonder how people in Minot manage.

Moni

If they are like my crazy friends in Minnesota and Quebec Canada, they are breaking out the snow shoes and looking forward to playing in the snow they just got.

They have antifreeze for blood. But whine when it gets above 80 degrees thinking they are going to pass out in the heat. :-)

randy

Well, our low bottomed out at 19, so it was hardly cold at all. : ) Of course, that didn't stop all the water in the bird waterers and dog dishes from freezing....and I had to break the ice on the lily pond so the wild creatures could drink. AND I carried water outside in a bucket and poured it on top of the "wildlife" puddle, so the small animals like birds and squirrels could drink.

Those people in the cold parts of the country can have their cold and their snow and their cross-country skiing and their snowshoes. I'd never, ever move to a colder part of the country....and most of them probably have no desire to move to the parts of the country that are sizzling hot. My DH moved here from Pennsylvania right after college and has no desire to move back. After about 3 days of cold, cloudy weather, he starts complaining and saying "I moved here to get away from weather like this".

We have freezing rain/ice in our forecast for tomorrow morning but I am not worried. Moisture in general has not fallen here this year, so why would it start now? LOL

We were Christmas shopping in the Lewisville/Grapevine area today down in Texas and it was just as cold there as Marietta, and cloudy and gloomy too. Where's our sunshine?

Dawn

LOL ... Moni ... Minot is in North Dakota ... I'm familiar with it because I grew up in ND and lived there for years before I got my current job which transfers me around on a regular basis.

Randy's right ... they do have anti-freeze for blood ... but mine has thinned considerably after 10 years in Florida, Georgia and Oklahoma. The last winter I lived in ND, our coldest night with windchill was a minus 98 ... and we also got 116 inches of snow that winter. Naturally when it melted it created the flood from H**L ... had to evacuate the town of Grand Forks ... about 40,000 people.

Down here you get UV ratings/warnings during the summer months ... up there you are told how fast unexposed flesh will freeze. However, it also gets damn hot in the north during the summer. My Mom (Montana) regularly had days over 100 degrees ... and I'd taunt her about the 90 degrees we had in St. Petersburg, FL. That did come back to bite me in the butt ... I ended up here in Tulsa :-)

Brian

Brian,

As you might have noticed, you can have heat index readings in Tulsa that are scarey-hot. So, even though the winters are moderate compared to what much of the nation experiences, Tulsa's hot and humid summers can be miserable.

At least in my part of Oklahoma, when the temps spike up over 100, we normally have very low humidity....while in Tulsa at the same time and with almost the same conditions, y'all usually have high humidity, which is a lot more dangerous.

We bought our land in 97 and moved here in 99 and had a few good rainy years. Since 2005, though, we've suffered from recurring drought much worse than just your standard dry July and August weather. I'd like to have the weather back again that we had in the early 2000s when a lot more rain fell. We haven't had a really, really hot summer here in Marietta since 2006. Honestly, though, once the temperature goes over 105, I can't tell much difference--once it is that hot, it doesn't matter to me if it is 106 or 108 or 110 because they all are unbearably hot.

Right now, hot weather sounds good.....and it also sounds far, far away.

Dawn

Oh yes ... I'd noticed the humidity/heat combo here in Tulsa. That's how my laughing at Mom came back to bite me ... hers was just hot, not humid. This last summer the late July/early August period was miserable ... and that's an understatement. I think we had 10 or 11 100+ days in row with the heat index being rather higher.

When I would leave work I'd have to lean in to start my car and open the windows while the AC ran ... otherwise I'd about pass out ... black car in an open lot in downtown Tulsa. My steering wheel was generally so hot I had to cover my hands when I finally got in. Probably wouldn't have burned my hands but it sure felt like they were roasting. I'm sure where you were in Marietta was worse even if it was a "dry heat" as they say.

Overall I'd rather deal with the heat than the cold ... maybe too many years in the north. But I definitely pray the central air doesn't fail.

Brian