7+ inches for my area on the 5 day forecast. time to empty the rain barrels and check the eaves troughs.

Well, they now have Durant in the 8" region, interesting!

Wait! When is this coming? Still Thursday and Friday? Hopfully not Wednesday?!!?

It is supposed to start Wednesday down here as light showers. I'm going to link the QPF page. It shows estimated daily rainfall totals for Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc., which will help you see when/where the rainfall will be heaviest. The QPF updates several times a day, so often it will change a lot over a fairly brief period of time. We've been in the 7-8" category for a while but normally we get either a lot less than they say (that would be great in this case) or a lot more than they say (uh oh).

Here's the QPF page. Click on any day or combination of day to see forecasted rainfall:

QPF for Days 1 - 7

We're ready, or as ready as you can be. We're already having problems with firefighting brush trucks getting stuck in mud while fighting grass fires lately, so the last thing we need is more rain. While grasses and forbs that froze are now dry and/or dormant and burn easily, the ground is wetter that it looks and firefighters are stuck before they realize they've driven onto really moist soil. If we get the amount they are forecasting for Wed-Sun, we won't be able to fight grass fires in the fields. We'll have to sit on the roadways and wait for the fires to burn to us. Just yesterday we had at least 4 trucks stuck in the mud at a grassfire. It took 4 pickup trucks (lined up like train cars, all hooked together with chains) pulling and one tractor pushing simultaneously to get one large brush tanker out of the mud, and guess who's husband got it stuck there in the first place? (Don't tell him I told y'all about this!) It was in black gumbo clay, but wet red clay and saturated sand are just as bad.

Our rainfall for the YTD is already 5-6" over our previous record rainfall, and if this week's rain materializes, we'll be so far above the old record that it isn't even funny. It is insane.

Lisa, You can freeze turkey if you have a big enough freezer, but hopefully it won't come to that.

We haven't changed our Thanksgiving plans because of the rain (we are driving to someone else's house, or maybe we'll be boating to someone else's house), but I probably will wear rainboots instead of cuter footwear that doesn't tolerate mud well. Heck, maybe I'll wear my fire boots. They certainly tolerate mud, water and just about everything else.

The part that worries me is that the NWS is mentioning the prospect of "river flooding" in southern OK. Really? We have already had three serious rounds of river flooding in 2015. I cannot believe we may have a 4th.

On the other hand, y'all, at least for those of us down here in the southern portion of the state, it only is supposed to be rain. Folks further north/west may have a wintery mix or freezing rain. Triple yuck!

The Norman weather forecast office of the NWS has great graphics up on their webpage that show the chances of rain in various areas on different days and nights and you can look at those to see what you're getting and when you're likely to get it. Please note that in NW OK and in parts of northern, western and central OK, some freezing precip is predicted in some areas over a few days.

Here's the NWS-Norman webpage. It also updates as needed throughout the day, so check it often for the latest forecast information. You can click on all the graphics to enlarge and see them, or can click on your own county to see the local forecast.

NWS-Norman

If you are covered by a different office of the NWS, such as the Tulsa office for eastern OK and parts of AR, or the Amarillo office for the OK panhandle, just google NWS-Tulsa or NWS-Amarillo to get their webpage.

It's all good, isn't it? Any and all rainfall is beneficial, or at least until too much falls and then it is all bad. OK is like Goldilocks, always hoping for the amount of precip that is just right, but mostly having to deal with precipitation that is too big or too small or poorly timed.

Still, despite the frustrations of getting too much rain at once, I am going to try hard to enjoy this El Nino rainfall pattern while it lasts. Know why? Because lots of rain is much better than almost no rain, and often we get La Nina patterns after El Nino, and La Nina tends to leave us hurting for rainfall and sliding back into drought.

Finally, a new tropical storm has formed off the southern coast of Mexico and, if it takes the expected track, it could send a large moisture plume into Mexico and into or towards TX, OK or parts of the SW USA in the next few days. I am not sure if our current QPF totals are taking into account that the Tropical Storm out in the Pacific could send even more moisture our way. El Nino strikes again.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving holiday everyone, and try to remember all those dry Thanksgiving Days in past years when we were far too dry. The pendulum just has swung the other way this year and it might be enough to make us nostalgic for one of those dry Thanksgivings. I miss the sunshine already.