Maybe it isn't field mice on this night of nights. Maybe it is ghosts and goblins and things that go bump in the night. : )

We ended up with 4.05" here, which added to last week's 6.22" gives us 10.27" in the last couple of weeks. We are wet and muddy, wet and drippy, muddy and drippy and....the mud room is indeed a mud room at the moment with muddy shoes, wet umbrellas, etc. The sky stayed overcast and was sort of misty or foggy on and off all day. We are longing to see the sun shine for a while tomorrow. At times it was as if the clouds tried to lift and go away but couldn't quite muster the energy. It felt like such a sleepy day here.

We got a total of 2 and a half inches here in rural NE Norman! The ground is soooooo soft now. I'll bet the gophers and moles are gonna love it. Blech.

On the upside, the wet ground and the low winds are going to make it a perfect day to burn trimmed branches and castor plants!

Ground is good and saturated. Today: sunshine. Boy, I miss being out there turning compost piles and and ...

I ended up with 2" almost on the nose in my garden rain gauge. Emptied it out just in time for some more sprinkles to start falling from the sky this afternoon.

I had roughly 3/4 inch in my gage. Also nice slow rain.

We barely got any sun today but stayed sort of foggy, misty and drizzly all day. The little bits of drizzle that fell didn't add up to very much. Our rain gauge has another 0.10". Hopefully we finally get real sunshine for more than 5 minutes tomorrow.

It was beautiful here today. Sunshine and light wind. Kodak moment

The sun tried to come out all morning yesterday, but the fog and clouds made it very difficult. We finally got sunshine in the afternoon, so the afternoon was gorgeous. The fog is back this morning. We're hoping for a whole sunny day or two before the next round of rain arrives.

Bring it on! I've waited forever for a good strong El Nino to develop and bring us rain, rain, rain so I'm going to try to think positive and enjoy every glorious day of rain that we get, even if the skies are gray and gloomy and lacking in sunshine. We all know that all too often the rain misses us, so we have to love it and appreciate it whenever we do get it.

Having said that, the Slight risk area bears watching, but I think the tornado risk will be further south of us in Texas although we likely could get strong wind or even some hail here. If we have to have hail, I'd certainly rather have it in autumn ( our second severe weather season) when the garden is about done for the year and when the fruit trees are not loaded with flowers and fruit, than in springtime when there is so much more growing that could be damaged.

We never can totally ignore even a Slight risk area though, not even in November. A few years back, Lone Grove (in Carter County) got hit by a deadly EF-4 tornado in February (I think it was either February 9th or 10th of 2009), which serves as a reminder that we can have severe storms and tornadoes here even in fall or winter months. We were sitting here under a Tornado Watch, then a Tornado Warning, watching on our local CBS affiliate as their storm chaser chased the tornadic cell....and did such a good job of having himself in the right (or wrong) place at the right time that the tornado almost came down on top of him. It was horrifying, especially as he gave its location and we realized it was going to hit Lone Grove (after the warned thunderstorm already had done relatively minor damage to the westernmost portion of our county). I believe 8 people died in that tornado. If it can happen in February, you know that it can happen in November too...or in any month.

I noticed this morning that counties to our southeast, but not the one due south of us, in Texas already have Flash Flood Watches up since their rain totals are expected to be slightly larger than ours, and the rain will be falling on areas where flooding has occurred two weeks in a row and the ground is heavily saturated, and ponds and creeks are full. The QPF doesn't show big rainfall totals for us here, and I'm glad. We have had big rain already recently, and now just getting regular showers with smaller amounts of rainfall is all we need (and want). I love the long, slow soaking rains that allow rain to soak in and percolate down into the ground instead of all just running off in crazy flooding.

Unfortunately, the QPF shows a lot of rain falling in Texas in exactly the same areas that have had excessive rainfall and deadly flooding during the last couple of weeks. The soil there is so saturated that it won't take much rain at all to cause flooding. I hope our neighbors to the south don't have more storm-related deaths this week.

The Current 7-Day QPF

The air is so thick here tonight that I don't know what's keeping it from raining. Our rain is suppose to start in the morning, I hope it's a good slow rain. I feel for our neighbors in Texas, they just keep getting hammered. I agree Dawn, we can have tornadoes any month.

Hope everybody gets rain if they need it and stay safe.

Another 1.75" in my rain gauge this morning. It came down pretty heavy for a little while last evening.

It sprinkled a little yesterday morning, but then quit, so DH and I got most of the beds prepared and planted with rye grain. Then just about dark it opened up and we got 1.34 inches of badly needed rain. Yay. Of course now it is too wet to till and plant the rest of the garden for a few days.

We got almost 2" yesterday and I think another 2" in the rain before that. Pretty wet around here.

We got 3/4" and it rained so hard it was sideways. It did no good at all but it wet things down a little bit. We will see what happens with the next storm.