Hey Dawn: I am watching the clouds and weather closely today. I'm in Claremore, and I didn't even realize we had a tornado on the ground a couple weeks ago until it was on us. It missed my house by one mile. My phone went off with a warning, and I had just about enough time to stand on the porch and listen to it. Some of the neighbors could see the funnel from their vantage points, but I couldn't see it from mine. The rumbling was very audible. I don't have a storm cellar, and not even a really good place to hunker down (the hallway is my best bet). Luckily for me, I have a 35 year old well built home, with extra thick exterior walls. I live alone, and no family in town today. I will check in as the storms go through.

As for the garden, I sure would hate to lose it to hail, but I will live with it. I am more concerned about lives and homes. Gardens can always be replanted.

Everyone take care.

Mary

I usually just accept the warnings and spend a lot of time watching the movement on-line and listening to the experts on TV. We have a shelter and are the place where neighbors gather. This one is making me nervous. It is so strong and covers such a wide area. Looks like it will hit my area after dark and that makes it worse. I will cover as much of my garden as I can, and be ready to take cover quickly. I think everyone should be on high alert today.

I would love to cover mine, but I can't. Got over my head with my new "tomato grow operation" this spring and I just don't have enough bird netting, pots, etc to cover 55 tomatoes and 40 peppers, herbs, and about 20 cucumber/squash/zucchini, stuffed into less than 700 sq. feet of garden space . Even after picking all the blossoms off all the tomatoes and peppers, everything re-bloomed and I have baby tomatoes and baby peppers. I am "letting go and letting G-d", as some would say. I had fun growing them! I will just be happy to see us all get through with no structural damage, injuries, etc.

I started asking Jeff to come home early last night before we went to bed.And today in email.I have left him alone for a couple of hours now lol.i have my bin ready to take to the cellar.trying to figure out what the heck to sit on down there.plus i know i can get down the ancient narrow steep steps hauling janey on a leash but not sure about getting back up by myself so you may have to bring me more protein bars and visit me there.

i was never this bad til our biggy in el reno 3 years ago.....

The line of storms has passed through here with strong winds, rain, and just a bit of small hail. The heaviest rain only lasted twenty minutes and measured 0.25 inch. It's still lightly raining with some lightning. I am so grateful the severity of the storm was less than predicted at lunchtime. I hope it is for all of you, too.

Michelle

Wichita County, TX

el reno checking in .ok.rain small hail strong winds.a tiny tornado touched down on cimmaron road which is like 3-5 miles east.

I think I need to apologize to everyone for causing this storm. We have a peony about to bloom, and it really does seem that they bring on hailstorms.
Fortunately, here in Midwest City, it has been mostly rain. May God protect your lives and homes.

Chickasha had gusty wind & it's still raining. No hail or 'nadoes. Did lose power for a bit (but that happens when a squirrel sneezes around here.) Probably could have skipped covering various baby herbs and tomatoes in my raised beds but better safe than sorry!

Rain, wind, orange skies...then more rain and wind. Right now a torrential rain...but no threats at this time. It was touch-n-go for a bit earlier this evening. I took "before" pics of the garden....(rural NE Norman).

The Spring Fling WILL go on...so everyone who has damage - say something! I'll bet we've got you covered. I'll have the remainder of 3 flats of tomatoes and one of peppers providing I don't get wiped out....and I'm sure others have some to contribute too.

I'm close to Paula. We had some small hail early and then a break. The buckets I put over the tomatoes stayed in place during the first round. HOWEVER, the second round probably blew the buckets off down the field. I'm thinking about putting on the rain gear and checking on everything because I'm a weirdo like that.

The squall line has passed us. They had a tornado warning for all of Tulsa county. Little ones were popping up all along the leading edge. Claremore getting it as I type, and Broken Arrow had a confirmed touch down. Still a lot of rain and wind behind it. Temp must have dropped 20* in the last half hour. Be safe everyone.

Checking in from Claremore. Sirens went off for about 30 minutes. There was no lightening, thunder, or anything. I finally got up and noticed the whole neighborhood is fast asleep. We are now getting a thunderstorm.

North of Grove, some thunder and rain, which is continuing, but no hail and very little wind. What a blessing.

In NWA, we got some mid to light rain....that's all.

It was a dark and stormy night.....

But we did not suffer any major damage here at our house. Some folks in our county had outbuildings and their contents damaged or destroyed, trees down and power lines down, so we felt immensely lucky by comparison. Only one community (Thackerville) had to sound sirens and open shelters due to a tornado warning just across the Red River to their south, and all the hail reports I heard last night were for small hail. We did have hard rain and a lot of really spectactular lightning.

I'm so grateful the cap held and that we didn't get long-tracked, violent tornadoes. Tim and I were laughing that our weather stayed quiet and dull until bedtime. Who needs sleep? Apparently, not us.

I do not regret the time I spent covering up plants to protect them from the storm. We watched lots of storms heading our way with hail cores and just feel lucky that they seemed to run out of hail before they got here.

We have another chance of severe weather on Friday, and tons of rain in our forecast over the next few days, so at least my plants are covered and protected from the Friday weather. I got about 2/3s of our garden covered with netting and the areas not covered simply had plants that had gotten too tall to cover. I got about 95% of the tomato plants covered and it was a very time-consuming process since most of them already were caged, but I did it. I'm not inclined to get in a hurry to remove that netting any time soon. Since we did not get hail that was large enough to thin the fruit on the fruit trees, I guess I'll be thinning fruit today.

all good in my part of Bixby. The heart of downtown had a small spin up that damaged a few buildings. Just heavy rain at the house.

Checked the property and garden. All seems well. So glad it wasn't as bad as it could have been. A few onions look iffy. The buckets blew off of two tomatoes and one tomatillo. Only the tomatillo looks slightly damaged. And the garlic of all things is leaning way forward but no broken leaves.

I'm always exhausted after a day/night like yesterday. All the stress and worry. Children picked up early from school. Arranging to pick my son up early. We all need a nap now.

For us it was just another evening of watching David Payne and company! It got a little blustery and rained enough to keep my out of most of the garden for a few days.

Round one of the gopher wars started yesterday after I discovered an Anaheim MIA! Set a couple of traps and caught one of the pesky buggers right off the bat! I figure I'll set a few magnum smokebombs and put down some 'peanuts' in the tunnels, cover the hole and plant some lemon cucumber plants I acquired yesterday.

It is a job to cover and uncover, isn't it? After the major storm passed us last night, I ran out in the rain and removed the greenhouse plastic from my onion beds so they could have the benefit of the rain. We left all of the other covers in place until this morning so removing 60-70 pots was a job. The caged tomatoes that had pots with cord attached went pretty fast, since Al just grabbed the cord and pulled it up through the top of the cage, but the others took a long time to remove and stack.

Last night I was thinking, ' I planted too many tomatoes', today I was thinking 'where can I put the rest of the tomato plants that I still have cages for?' The decisions of an obsessed gardener. LOL

My outside row of potato plants fell over and are all sprawled this morning. Maybe some will change a little as the sun dries them. I noted yesterday that the row needed to be hilled-up a little better, but I was too busy covering things to do that.

Dawn, I am also not sorry that I covered things after looking at the potato plants and all of the tree twigs on the ground. We must have had more wind than I realized. My new strawberry bed is covered with netting, so that one got to stay in place.

At one point we had a tornado warning that came into the south part of our county, and another above us that moved from Craig county to our west to Ottawa county to our north. They were both there at the same time, but we were not included. We were really in the doughnut hole again.

I am concerned about mulberryknob, because her area looked much worse that ours, and the warning stayed on for a long period as the storm moved through her area. Most of our area had high winds and the tornado warnings were very short, but that was not the case for her area.

I'm worried about her too. I was watching the radar, looking at those storms moving towards your area and hers, and wondering if everything was okay. By then, our worst weather had ended, though I also still was watching the Grayson County tornado.

Hazel, I agree about needing a nap. I need a good lunch too because all I did yesterday was focus on covering plants and barely ate or rested. I need a nice big lunch and then a nice long nap today, but neither seems likely. I am exhausted and feel just like a cranky toddler.

Bruce, Those pesky gophers! I hate them. Luckily our cats control gophers and moles just fine, but the voles come out of the woods (often underground) in never-ending hordes and the cats get tired of them and start ignoring them after a couple of months of dealing with them in spring.

Carol, Covering and uncovering is too much work, which is why I stopped using buckets. The garden is incredibly wet today, but the netting can stay on until the plants start growing through the netting itself, so that's more manageable for me than row cover or buckets. My plants look okay, with with 2" of rain, I won't be doing much in the garden for a while. I'll be able to pot up plants for the Spring Fling, and I can harvest, but it is too wet to plant or weed. We have a chance of severe weather on Friday, and the forecast shows us getting a lot more rain. I'm not happy about the rain. I wish it could fall in amounts that are just enough at just the time you need them, but it only seems to come in two quantities----too much or not enough.

I have tried hard to cut back and grow fewer tomato plants. Sadly, Tim did not grasp the concept of growing less. He only heard me say I was going to can less salsa and ignored the whole concept of growing less, so he promised fresh tomatoes to literally every single person he knows. In order to allow him to keep his promises, I couldn't cut back as much as I wanted. I'll get even with him at harvest time. I'm going to make him harvest, wash, sort and bag up all those tomatoes he wants to give away. My prediction is that after a few weeks of that, he'll stop promising things to people and then I truly can cut back on how many plants I put into the ground. In the past, I've done all the work and he's just picked up bags of give-away produce as he walks out the door. Well, the times are a-changing.

Dawn

All good in north OKC. I got about an inch of rain. Redbird...it's my fault too. I have peonies blooming all over my yard! I cut a huge vase of them last night just in case the rest got wiped out.

Good here in Durant, OK. No hail, just 1.5" of rain!

Someone just posted pictures of the Jay school baseball field and looks like a lot of damage there. Looks like damage to out-buildings and a big semi with a trailer flipped onto it's side.

I'm happy for all with little to no damage, and refuse to blame those of you with gorgeous flowers in bloom. Y'all didn't make it rain, and I hate that your peonies got rained upon. Carol, That's too bad about the school.

Now, where's Dorothy? I hope she and Glenn are okay.

I am happy that nobody here has any serious damage. For Dawn, I would like to say I often feel like a cranky toddler. :)

Ok here in SW OKC. High wind and sideways rain. Only got about 3/4". Still, it was a long stressful night. I had my personal storm spotter with me (he's 4 1/2). Haha

i dread Friday!!!

How bad can Friday be? I'm hoping it will be quieter than yesterday. One of our friends lost his shop building and barn. Another lost his garage. Since no tornadoes were reported here, we assume it was due to strong straight-line winds.

The Day 3 Convective Outlook (for Friday) at this point does not seem nearly as scary as the Convective Outlook for yesterday. We'll see how the Outlook changes tomorrow...or even on Friday as it updates based on the latest model guidance.

It would be nice if the folks who had damage could at least get everything cleaned up and boarded up and tarped before the next round of rain arrives, but I don't think many of them will have that chance.

Look at the bright side, everyone. Our April severe weather season is about to end. Of course, our May severe weather season is just beginning. I don't know about y'all, but after May ends, our severe weather down here fades away pretty quickly as the heat and dryness sets in. Until then, though, it seems like our persistent pattern of rain/severe weather has begun.

Today's Convective Outlook for Friday

I have heard from Macmex and they are fine and had minimal damage. Still wondering about Mulberryknob.

The only thing this has to do with gardening is the fact that it involves seeds, but it was kind of funny. A few years ago George shared some hot pepper seeds with me and I plant them almost every year because Al likes for me to dry them and grind them into flakes and he sprinkles them on his food but a bottle will last him a long time. Last year in late Fall I picked several branches of these little bright red peppers and just stuck them in a glass to dry. Al still had pepper flakes so I just never got around to grinding that bunch and thought I would probably just keep them for seeds. This weekend George sent me a message and asked me if I had some of those pepper seeds because his didn't germinate this year. I didn't see the msg until yesterday, but as soon as I saw it, I cut the stems off of some peppers and stuck them down in a little plastic jewelry size bag, and put that bag inside a bubble wrap type mailer and took it to the post office. It was super light, and the envelope probably weighed more than the contents but it puffed up a little because the seeds were whole and the plastic bag probably had a little air in it.

I had to wait in line for awhile, and when I gave the lady the package to weigh, she said, "That will be $2.45."

I gave her a questioning look and said, "Really?"

She said, "If you can make it thinner, it won't cost as much".

Without a pause, I made a fist, reached across the counter to the envelope and gave it three quick hits with the side of my folded fist. She pulled back a little and gave a little giggle, and said, "That will be 94 cents". The woman at the counter beside me laughed and said, "That would make a good commercial".

It was not my intent to entertain the Post Office patrons, but it seems I did. George said he received the package today, but I didn't ask him if the pods remained in the plastic bag, or if I blew them all out into the inside of the mailing envelope. I have now been educated by USPS and realize that although you are light weight, it will still cost more if you look fat. LOL

That's a hysterically funny story. It would make a cute commercial.

I'm glad George's family is fine.

I do wish we'd hear from Dorothy.

Maybe either the internet is out in her area or the power might be out.

Sorry to concern people. We are just fine. After covering our tomatoes and peppers just in case of hail, we didn't even get severe weather, although we did hear light hail. There weren't even dead branches lying around the yard the next morn. So not much wind. We got 1.11 inches of rain which was sorely needed. We planted corn a couple weeks ago and it came up very spotty because we were so dry and warm. So we get to replant now that we have moisture. We did hear that a small tornado passed a few miles north of us though.

I'm just glad to hear y'all are okay.

Bad storm just went through all people are well

Yall be safe I heard it was headed into Oklahoma

Love it Carol!