Wow. I'm so sorry. I would wait to see how things look in a week or so.

I started the clearing out process this morning, and will continue through the weekend. I think some of the lettuce/greens might make a small comeback, but much of the kale was already to a flowering stage, so I am not sure they will set new leaves. The bean sprouts had about 3 leaves each and I do not think they are coming back. I think I will end up just pulling the brussel sprouts. You know, at least I do not have to tackle the question of "When should I pull up my slowly less producing early spring plants to make way for summer crops?",,,,

That's true. It sounds like Mother Nature helped you out with that decision-making anyhow. Of course, we wish that were not the case.

Try to look on the bright side of things. If you average hail once a year, then statistically speaking, you should be hail-free for the next couple of years. Of course, life rarely works out all neat and tidy like that.

We went a very long time at our house with nothing bigger than pea-sized hail, which never really damages anything. A couple of times there was tennis to baseball sized hail in our county, but it didn't make it to us. Even quarter-sized hail that covered a pretty broad section of our county about a decade ago stopped a couple of miles north of us. It felt like we were living a charmed life. Then we had hail 11 times in one year. I guess we were making up for all those years with no hail damage, but it wasn't fun that year to get hit over and over again. The garden really didn't have too much damage even in the 11-hail-evenT year, which likely was either 2012 or 2013, but after about the sixth hailstorm, my nerves were shot.

Now that you've had time to spend a little time around the hail-damaged plants, how are they looking?

Are you ready for this week's rain/hail/tornadoes/flooding/etc.? If it is April (and it is) and we are in Oklahoma (which we are), then it is Severe season, and that's about my least favorite part of living here.

On Monday I'm going to open up the tornado shelter and air it out just in case we might find ourselves sitting in the shelter sometime Tuesday or Tuesday night.

Well, I managed to save a few plants, just a few kale, chard and lettuce plants. All the beans went down, and about 95% of the lettuce and kale went the way of the compost bin. I did spend about 10 hours this weekend, pulled up what could not be saved, and went ahead and replanted 20 rows of beans, okra, kale, cucumbers, squash, and more. And of course, more rain this week, more hail? Not sure, they seem to be flip flopping on that.

I'm so sad for your hard work down the tube! I'm glad you were able to salvage and get new seeds in.

I'm sorry you had so much destruction but glad you made so much progress on replacement.

Not just more hail seems likely, but very large to possibly GIANT hail according to the Day 2 Convection Outlook from the SPC. As of this morning's update, the big hail seems more likely at the southern end of the risk area, possibly in central and northern TX, and you know that many of us here in the Red River area often get our worst weather events coming our way from TX after they develop there and move here.

Luckily for your garden and mine, (I think, and I mean 'luckily' in the oddest of ways), they've already been hit by hail several times this spring, so you'd think the law of averages might mean we won't get hit this week, but sometimes the law of averages just don't work out for gardeners.

I'll be watching KXII tonight to see what Steve LaNore says about the prospect of hail. I'll also try not to work through lunch so I can make it inside for the noon news to see what Tom Miller says.

I also keep an eye not only on the NWS-Norman webpage but on the NWS-Fort Worth webpage, since our worst weather at this time of year often starts SW of our county somewhere in TX and then moves NE towards us, giving us a chance to sit and watch the radar as it shows storms heading our way. I also keep an eye on WFAA's radar almost nonstop on stormy days using the one for North Texas because it shows southern OK so well.

Yesterday afternoon my son was pulling up models on the Pivotal Weather website and showing me what they were showing for various parts of the day, evening and night on Tuesday. Cape Values, in particular, look horribly high for some areas tomorrow. I just dread the weather that's cominh tomorrow knowing some folks in the TX/OK/KS/NE area (and likely beyond that area) seem likely to get hit hard.

Since at least the mid-1980s, it seems like North Texas runs in big hail cycles. They'll go several years without exteme hail, and then they'll have repeated cycles (sometimes for 2 or 3 years in a row) of big hail hitting over and over again, and often it keeps hitting the same communities again (this year, it seems like Wylie, Frisco and Plano are under the gun). Once in the late 1980s or maybe the very earliest 1990s, friends of ours in Arlington got hit 3 times in what I believe was three consecutive springs by baseball to softball sized hail. Every time they got the roof, windows, skylights and interior of the house repaired and replaced and finally got the landscaping fixed again and everything was finally back to normal, the giant hail struck again. Unfortunately, this seems like a year for N TX to have that sort of repeated cycles of big hail and you and I live too close to N TX to let our guard down. I've been through baseball-to-softball sized hail twice in my life, both in N TX, and it is a horrifying experience I hope never to repeat again. Sadly, even much smaller hail will destroy a garden.

Baseball to softball sized hail around 1979 or 1980 just destroyed my parents' house, putting large holes not just through the entire roof and all the windows on the north side of the house, but even through the exterior siding, and interior walls and ceilings. To fix the house, much of it had to be stripped down to the studs. Damage to every living plant outdoors was almost as bad, and some trees lost so much foliage they never recovered. That is the sort of storm I dread having.

While losing a large part of the veggie and flower garders is devastating in its own way, we've never had anything bigger than about half-dollar sized hail hit our house since moving here, and my garden rebounded pretty well from that. Our Fort Worth house took a huge amount of hail damage one year in the 1990s from hail that was almost tennis ball sized, but my garden tolerated the hail damage that year really well, which surprised me. That was likely in April or earliest May of that year. The garden likely survived as well as it did because of the direction from which the hail came, which meant the hail had to fall through the canopy of our next door neighbor's tall trees (which shaded the garden more than I liked, but which in this case helped), which meant it had slowed down significantly by the time it hit my garden plants....and they had the added "shelter" of many small limbs knocked down on top of my garden by the hail. And, honestly, there was so much damage to our roof, window screens, and ornamental plantings that year (oh, and to our large above-ground swimming pool and to our cars) from the hail that I had a lot more than my garden to worry about. It likely was the least of my worries as it was more quickly fixable than everything else. It is hard to get a roofer to fix your house when every single house in the neighborhood also needs a new roof at the same time.

I don't even want to think about having hail this week, but I think this region is likely to see some big, big hail. Since hail is usually so hit-and-miss, I'm hoping we all escape it, but good luck only carries us so far in the spring before it runs out.

Dawn,

They've been playing up the weather threat for central Oklahoma on Tuesday (26th) since last Wednesday or Thursday. With so much buildup I'm hoping that means nothing much will happen. Of course we are cleaning the storm shelter and making sure we have everything we need for it just in case.

osuengineer, They've been talking about it down here for just as long, but you know, with that cautionary....."it is a long way out and we'll have to see how things come together" type statement. I try to take it with a grain of salt when we're that far out, but if we get closer and closer and things seems to be coming together, I start getting that "oooh, it is April in Oklahoma" sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. On the other hand, at least it isn't May yet. May always seems worse to me than April, in terms of severe weather.

The area highlighted by the SPC on the Convective Outlook is so large that I feel certain someone will get hit. I just don't think that all of us are likely to get hit at the same time or on the same day.

I should have thinned fruit on the plum and peach trees today. It is almost too late to thin just because they flowered and fruited so early and the fruit is enlarging rapidly. Instead, I promised myself that I will thin the fruit on Wednesday, if the Tuesday evening/overnight storms don't do it for me.

If I really felt strongly that our specific location in our county would get hit hard tomorrow, I wouldn't have planted anything today, but I feel like it is one of those "maybe" things where the hail might get us but probably won't, so I transplanted about 40 little tiny Sugar Baby watermelon volunteers that had popped up on the edge on a raised bed of tomatoes.

On days like tomorrow is expected to be, y'all always seem to get hit much harder in central and NE OK than we get hit down here, but here I sit watching the radar and worrying about everyone up there even if I'm not having to flee to the cellar myself. I don't think I have to go to my shelter nearly as much as some of y'all have to go to yours. Our county probably averages one tornado on the ground (often rural, damaging very little in terms of structures or injuring people) every 2 or 3 years, but we often get rotating supercells that could drop a tornado any time and cause tornado warnings to be issued. I see maybe 1 minor funnel cloud a year. That's not so bad. It is the fear of it that often is worse than the event itself, at least down here.

Dawn

I think we've only went to the shelter a couple of times since we've had it. Funny thing is with the exception of about an 18 month period, I've lived in Oklahoma my whole life and have only seen one funnel cloud in person. The threat of hail worries me more than tornadoes. I just don't want my onions destroyed. I have about 250 and they look so good right now.

For years we rarely went to the tornado shelter, but for the last few years we have had small funnel clouds all over the place here....it is just that they either pass over our county and go touch down someplace else or they never touch down at all. The EF-4 that hit Lone Grove in Carter County a few years ago came down just enough in Love County to tear up a couple of buildings (mostly just the roofs) and some trees, but didn't do major damage until it hit Lone Grove. Many Love Countians watched a big tornado up in the sky for a prolonged period of time a few years ago, but it didn't touch down until it reached Tushka, OK, in 2011. So, most of our experience is just watching them fly by overhead on their way elsewhere. I'm okay if that never changes. My brother was living in and attending college in Wichita Falls, TX, in 1979 when their huge tornado hit there. He was fine, but many people he knew lost their homes and some died. Up until then, I really didn't pay much attention to tornadoes, as they always seemed to happen elsewhere.

As an adult in Fort Worth I lived in the same neighborhood where I had grown up and we never had a tornado. Never. A couple of years after we moved here, our neighborhood had one and then another. My brother's house was spared but he stood in his yard and watched as it went over his place low enough that the trees had damage. It hit the school less than a mile from his house, and his two high school aged children were sheltering in the band hall as he followed the tornado to the school, fearing the worst. While the school had fairly minor damage, all the people were okay. It was hard sitting here and watching the radar and fearing his house and my mom's house was about to get hit. It is a lot easier to watch a tornado on the radar when you don't know folks in the threatened area.

I am more worried about hail too today because, statistically speaking, we're more likely to get it at our house than to get a tornado. I have bird netting and the stronger deer netting over as many of my garden plants as possible, but once you have plants climbing trellises and fairly large tomato plants in 6-8' tall cages, there's not much else you can do for them. I only covered my onions with bird netting, which I sort of regret. I wish I'd used chicken wire as it is the best onion crop I've ever had this early in the year. Since the plants are so tall, I didn't want to use the heavier chicken wire over them, but now I wish I had. I should have a few hours today to cover up a few more things, but most of the flowers and herbs are on their own unless they are in beds with veggies that I did cover. I've had good luck in the past with bird and deer netting protecting plants from hail, but if we get baseball to softball sized hail, I doubt the netting or the plants survive it. My main project for this morning is to try to cover up the watermelon plants, one row of peppers that aren't covered yet, and the cucumber plants that are climbing a trellis. Oh, and then I have to move about 15 large containers under the patio or into the greenhouse along with all the flats of plants I've got ready to take to the Spring Fling at Paula's. All those flats will go into the greenhouse, which likely won't survive really large hail either if we get it.

I hate going to the tornado shelter but if they issue a warning for us, I always do it. There's only been one time, really, when we sat in there in a very loud, raging storm and really, really feared our house was about to get hit. In the end, all we had was damage from strong wind and golf ball sized hail, but to this day that was the loudest, most lightning-filled storm I've ever seen. It was so scary on radar that we took our dogs to the shelter with us, which we usually don't do, and they were petrified. Looking back, I am surprised we got them to leave the house and go to the shelter in a raging storm, but they walked out there on a leash just like we were going for a little walk around the block.

Yeah, I have a bad feeling about today, normally I do not. Perhaps it has been the three bouts of hail we have already had in Durant, but I think we are going to get something today, and it is not going to be pretty. I wish I had a garage at my house so I could pull our vehicle into it, all I can do not is try to pull the truck up as close to the house as possible so the windshield is under the overhang. I also have two functions to go to, one on campus here at Southeastern and starting at 5:30. It should be interesting. Everyone be safe today!

well since we had the hugest tornado in US 3 years ago here in El Reno i think we should have a pass on storms for today......will spend the morning and early afternoon prepping the porch and garden etc.jeff did use broom and de cobweb the stairs and all of the storm cellar last nite.i will put supplies down there.3 years ago we could get nothing on radio or cell phone as the tornado raged.jeffs brother in law in Florida was on channel 4 streaming and would text us updates.i remember we were in cellar for a solid 45 minutes.i was telling jeff if we did not make it how much i had loved being with him for 30 years.45 minutes is an eternity.usually we are in there like 15.we are still cleaning up the last bit of damage etc from the two ice storms.good grief Oklahoma.

i am glad i don't have much in garden yet.but i am really hoping my new little greenhouse i waited for for years does not get hailed :(

kfrinkle, Did y'all get a hard hit last night? I was thinking of you and your garden when the severe weather, including thunderstorms and tornadoes, was raging here and particularly when the tornadoes were hitting Cooke and Grayson counties.

leava, My greenhouse has tolerated repeated rounds of hail, and I expect yours will do the same.

Dawn