I was wondering about Bon, too. Check in girl! My son and family are at Lake Carl Blackwell, which is west of Stillwater. Called them. They were out on the lake when it started to rain! Another son in Arkansas, but I'm not sure where. The weather can just knock it off!

Thanks ya'll. We're fine. I've been "attempting" to shop for groceries. I started off at Dollar General when the sirens went off. Can you believe they locked up? They sent all the customers and employees right out the door into the weather. I had intended on eating some chips while I waited it out. Miss slow poke doesn't mind waiting.

So, I went straight home. Now, you gotta understand. There's ALWAYS someone home. I found no one. I looked on the other property thinking they were in the dungeon house, but it was all locked up. I guess I'm a little slow, today. They were in the storm shelter. lolz Been a weird day, but we're fine.

But it rained! Yay!

bon

As long as y'all are okay, that's all that matters, but maybe next time you should check the storm shelter first. Just sayin'! Yay for the rain too.

Another pre-Independence Day evening of fireworks-induced fires is ongoing right now. At least 6 VFDs have been paged out so far, though the individual grass fires so far have been small and easily extinguished. We're hoping the rain to our south and west will get here and put an end to all the DIY Fireworks Shows and the grass fires they start. I think Tim is just to stay at the station and see if we get paged out again. If he tries to drive home, the pagers may go off again before he even gets here.

The other day when I mentioned you seemed to be writing more this time of year I thought to myself that I was glad to see it. I always worry when you haven't posted for a few days and think a big fire might be up. I'm glad it's raining in most parts of Oklahoma. hopefully, it will eliminate or reduce the fires by hazardous people.

Amy, I haven't heard of any tornadoes or tornado damage out in Stillwater. Hope everyone is okay.

Just rain. Yay!

Bon, I am concerned that fire season is heating up down here. There has been rain in some parts of southern OK this morning but it missed us again. However, our fire pagers went off sometime around 4:30 a.m. (which is why I am awake) for a motor vehicle accident on the interstate (a semi hit a bridge). This happened about 5 miles south of us (at Thackerville) and it may have been raining down there at the time. I know we awakened hearing thunder and seeing lightning visible to our south, but no rain was falling at our house. Tim is still out at the scene of the accident and I believe the entire interstate remains shut down. Chris was driving to work at about the time this all happened and got hit by what he described as hail the size of hen's eggs while further south on the interstate in Texas.

We're now at more than 30 days with no rain here at our house, other than that 0.02" we got a day or two ago, and our pastures are turning brown. I've been trying to water the garden every 3rd, 4th or 5th day, depending on how miserable the plants look on any given day, but am not willing to keep up that watering long-term, other than to keep perennials alive. I hope to keep the plants at least alive so they can hang on into fall, but only time will tell. Every time it rains we get caught in a dry slot and rain misses us even if it falls in many other parts of the county. That is our typical La Nina pattern (and even though a La Nina has not yet been declared, it makes me think one is coming).

We had a lot of grass fires back in March, but then rain fell and that activity tapered off. Oddly, though, we have had a huge spike in both medical calls and in non-grass fires, like structure fires, vehicle fires, etc. so that the VFD has remained fairly busy. Every day this holiday weekend, Tim's day has begun with a very early morning fire call of some sort and he has ended the day with a very late call, and had other calls in between. He'll probably be glad to get back to work tomorrow so he can recover from his busy 4-day weekend. Because most have been short and quickly dealt with, I haven't had to go out and take the firefighters food and drinks except for the Friday night fire. We are having at least a couple of grassfires daily but they are being caused by people setting off fireworks and so far most have remained small. We still have a decent amount of green in most pastures, depending on whether they've been mowed or hayed recently. The ones that haven't been mowed or hayed have retained more green than those cut recently since there hasn't been any rain to green up the areas mowed recently, leaving lots of brown stubble in fields.

Independence Day runs one of two ways here---either it is very busy or not busy at all. Based on the last 3 days, Tim expects it will be very busy today, and I hope he is wrong. With the Heat Advisory in place, it will be miserable for all first responders out working those sorts of calls today. I'd like to be out in the garden all day, but think it will be too hot. Our maximum heat index was 108 yesterday and today likely will be about the same unless somebody else's rain-cooled air brings us some relief. I harvested last night in the cooler evening air and will make pickles early today before the fire calls pick up, but I'm postponing making the last of the salsa until tomorrow even though I had hoped to have the salsa-making wrapped up by now. Just knowing that tomorrow will be the last day I make salsa makes the thought of canning 5 batches in one day more bearable somehow. Then I can move on and start canning other tomato products, which will be less monotonous.

Dawn

Rain missed us again. It was close enough to smell, but nothing fell. The fireworks went off till midnight, I finally drifted off about 1:00am or so. Took forever to calm everybody down to go to sleep. Tonight will be just as bad or worse. We are still green but this weeks predicted heat will take care of that real fast.

stockergal, I hate that. Absolutely hate it. You can smell the rain, feel the storm in the atmosphere and anticipation builds because it usually is followed by much-needed rain. When it doesn't happen, it's like a thief came, a politician practiced graft or your lover cheated. I love storms, so it really really sucks when this happens.

Dawn, we can wish for a quiet evening for ya'll. We know that wish is not likely to happen, but we can hope for a middle ground where all the busy calls end up with decent news, no serious injuries or property damage. Most of all, we can hope nothing spread into an out of control wildfire.

bon

I agree with you. The lack of rainfall in some portions of OK over the last 30 days is turning green to brown really quickly and this week just will make it worse. It is stunning how quickly our clay has develped big cracks and our grass has gone to brown.

Here's the rainfall for the last 30 days:

Rainfall for Last 30 Days:

And, here it is expressed as a percentage of normal rainfall for the same period:

30 Day Rainfall As A Percentage of 30-Yr Average

This map is looking about as ugly as the rapidly browning grass.

Bon, So far, so good, knock on wood. That semi truck hitting the bridge in the middle of the night was all the excitement we needed. Thankfuly the two occupants of the truck survived. I had foolishly thought maybe we'd get to sleep in today since Tim wasn't working but that didn't happen. We were awakened around 4 a.m. just as if his alarm was going off. I need earplugs or something so I can just not hear the fire pager in the middle of the night (or pretend I don't hear it, lol). I feel like a cranky 3-year-old who has had too much day already and needs a nap.

I cannot motivate myself to can today, feeling so sleep deprived and tired, so I made a pie, cleaned house and am getting ready so shell PEPH peas. That's sort of a mindless task that I can do without much thought.

It is so much cooler and more comfortable today. I think that so far our heat index has only hit 103, which is a lot nicer than it has been the last couple of days.

If there is going to be trouble tonight, it is likely to be around sunset when everyone starts setting off fireworks and somebody catches the grass on fire. It happened last night, it happened the night before, so I guess it is foolish to dare hope it will not happen again tonight.

Dawn

Woah. Hold on here a minute. I'm doing the word math, here. How does:

Tired + Sleep Deprived + Lack of Motivation = Make pies, Clean House and Shell Peas?

LOLz

I'm glad the trucker dudes are okay. I'm hoping you'll come back with "nothing much happened, no grass fires, not too many nutty people" I say hope!

Well, it made sense at the time because cleaning house can be done in spurts, making a pie (a simple Banana Split Pie, so no actual baking/heating up the kitchen was required) is necessary for our Fourth of July dinner, and shelling peas is a job that can be done sitting down while watching TV. All the above activities, too, are not as long and as involved as a day of canning. Of course, today I have to pay the piper by getting the canning done. We were smart and grilled our ribs for Monday on Sunday afternoon (along with our Sunday dinner, killing two birds with one stone), when it was quiet so all we had to do was reheat them on Monday, ensuring we'd have a good meal even if we had fire calls during the day.

It was very quiet all evening and Tim was like a cat on a hot tin roof prowling back and forth waiting for the pagers to start going off. So when did they start? Around 10 p.m., after he'd been in bed well over an hour. We got paged to a vehicle fire, and then a wreck happened a couple of miles south of that, and just a little bit earlier, 3 VFDs had been paged out to a grass fire near one of their fire stations. It really was a quiet, tame, Indepedence Day overall. I guess most people used up all their personal fireworks on Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings. We still heard fireworks going off all around us until well after midnight but didn't have any more fires. Or, I heard the fireworks. He sleeps soundly from the moment his head hits the pillow until his alarm goes off at 4 a.m.

Today is supposed to be another wickedly hot day, and that's another reason to get the canning of the tomatoes finished this week. It isn't like cooler weather that would make canning more pleasant is even on the horizon anywhere. I hope to finish all tomato products this week and then get a month or so off before starting in on peppers. My peppers are producing just fine and the jalapenos thus far are mostly being used in salsa or for fresh eating, but once the salsa-making stops, then at some point the canning of peppers begins. However, the cool May weather slowed them down a lot so they are not yet as heavily loaded with fruit as they will be a month from now, so I might have 2-4 weeks of almost no canning activity and that will be a pleasant break after a heavy canning load in all of June.

I appreciate having a very productive garden, truly I do, but this has been one of those years when everything under the sun was ripe and ready for harvesting in June and it made me spend too much time in the kitchen and not enough time outdoors. Now it is too hot to spend much time outdoors.

Our temperature is only 88, but the heat index is already 101. Since we are supposed to hit 94, I don't even want to think about what it will feel like later in the day. I was out just long enough to harvest and came in looking like a wet mop. LOL Some of my tomato plants that are near the walkway that had standing water after two of the three rainstorms in the last week, look terrible. I am sure their roots are just too wet although I can walk on the ground without sinking now. I talked with two people in different parts of Grove that had over 6 inches of rain in their gauge for that one night, and we have actually had 3 large rains at our house.

Not only do we have fireworks shows all around the lake, but people who vacation here forget that some of us live here and still work and try to have normal lives through the holiday. My DIL has been sleeping with earplugs because the fireworks are going off until midnight and she has to be at work at 4am. Some July 3rd events got 'weathered out", so there is another big show tonight. The big shows usually end by 10, then people go home are do their own show. It's about a 2 week event here most years. My dog sits in my lap for most of that time. LOL He even follows me to the bathroom and sits at my feet because he really hates the noise.

They had at least two fireworks stands in the Tulsa area that suffered large loses before the holiday. In one of them they have camera footage while they carried out huge loads of fireworks for two hours . I hope someone can identify the guys from the pictures. This one in Owasso has pretty good film: HERE I hate thieves.

I saw that on the news. I hate thieves too.

Especially thieves who steal from kids.

That is really hot, Carol. We're headed into extreme heat tomorrow after a brief break. I wish you could share some of that water!

I am very grateful. It must have been almost 15 years since I've had central a/c. I tell ya, I've had a hard time staying awake, but am slowly adjusting. Now, when I go outside, though, the heat hits me harder. Curious stuff.

We're already hitting that point where it feels like the nights barely cool off. It is just after 5 a.m. and my thermometer shows that it is 81 degrees here. I'll be heading outdoors as soon as the sun comes up so I can harvest before the heat gets too bad.

We didn't heat up early yesterday for once because rain to our southwest and south, which mostly traveled along and south of the Red River just barely missing our place, kept the air cool (77 degrees for three hours!) and the skies cloudy for several hours in the morning. It was nice until the storms moved on and the sun wasn't hidden by clouds any more. Then it got hot fast. We only got up to 96 yesterday but our heat index hit 107 and it was just miserable outdoors. We still were in the mid-80s at midnight. I feel sorry for all the animals stuck outdoors on such hot nights.

Bon, That's so true. Once you're acclimated to nice cool temperatures indoors, the outdoor heat seems even worse. I make myself stay outside for a part of every hot day, though, so my body doesn't become so acclimated to the indoor temperatures that it cannot handle the outdoor ones. It is a delicate balancing act to stay out long enough but not too long. We've had quite a bit of wind for July and that makes the heat so much worse---it is like a furnace is blowing hot air right in your face.

Our heat usually peaks in late July and early August so I keep telling myself that we only have about 6 more weeks of this heat and then the temperatures should start gradually falling around mid-August. Right now, though, mid-August seems like it is a long way off.

Dawn

Since we run about 2 weeks behind ya, that's 8 weeks for us. Sounds about right. We don't cool til last week in Aug or first week in September, usually.

I wonder if soonergrandmom cools in mid September? Actually, she seems a week ahead of me. I guess that's about right because I don't think she's as far north of me as you are South. I know that she gets more rain than both of us and refuses to share. We'll take it a few weeks late.

Yeah, that entire "daily" routine of getting outside? Sounds a lot like discipline. I'm allergic to that kinda stuff. Been working on the matter.

bon