I am probably one of the few who doesn't mind the cold. I am SO hot-natured, that I struggle in the heat of the summer. When my daughter was here last week, I had to adjust the thermostat, and run the fireplace. I was drenched in southern "glow" the whole time she was here....lol. I always froze her to death during both summer and winter when she was growing up;) I can always add a layer of clothing if I am cold, but Lord help us all if I have to start removing clothing when it's hot! lol

I love the warm winter days, hate the cold ones. I just wish we had a bit more consistency. Some mornings I start out wearing sweats, a coat and gloves, but have to shed all that for shorts and t-shirts by noon. I can't imagine these roller coaster temperatures are good for the plants.

Yeah, Dawn. Sometimes I think I'm getting too old for this.

I think this feels normal. Sitting smack dab in the middle of the country, all exposed and vulnerable on a big flat surface, we get to be at the mercy of any weather pattern which can zip up from the gulf or down from the arctic without anything to block it. We're just lucky because we get to enjoy the extremes duking it out overhead making sure we don't get too bored. We just have to wait a bit, next week its gonna be nice & sunny again which is better than being endlessly cold for a long long winter, always socked in and looking at boring snow for months, in my book it is anyway & I wouldn't trade for that kind of consistency. Give me our long hot summers over long cold winters any day. I bet those guys up there don't ever get to wear flip flops in winter.

Bon, If we retired and moved somewhere coastal with perfect weather, then we'd probably get bored with the heat and humidity and wish for some cold weather in winter. We humans cannot be pleased.

texasranger2, After a lifetime of living in the southern plains and always and forever being exposed to the constantly changing weather, I'd expect I ought to be used to it by now, but still I don't like it. Maybe I'm just getting old and cranky, but it seems to me that we ought to at least be cold or at least pretty much consistently cool in January, cause we sure stay hot for endless months in the summertime. I think I just never appreciate the weather we have. In the summer, I long for some cooler weather. In the cold parts of the winter, I long for warmth. I do love spring and fall though!

The first time I went to Pennsylvania to spend time with Tim's family on Memorial Day weekend and the morning lows were in the 20s and we had to wear coats, I was freaked out! Until then, I did not understand the meaning of living in the northeast and having a very long cool and cold season and a short warm (and never hot by our standards) season. I'd much rather be here, where we often can have something blooming every month of the year. A long cool or cold season would drive me out of my mind. Right after that visit, I made Tim promise me he'd never ask me to move out of Texas when we got married because I didn't want him to decide he wanted to move back to Pennsylvania where I might freeze to death about 9 months out of the year. He happily agreed because by then he'd lived in TX long enough that he preferred Texas winters to Pennsylvania winters. Oddly, here in OK where we are about 90 miles further north than where we lived in Texas, we are both hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. I was sort of hoping it might be that we'd be cooler in the summer up here, but that sure didn't happen.

I love Oklahoma. I ever love the weather, but it still makes me crazy. Today is warmer, then we have a good 3 days with temperatures around or above 70 down here, then an increasing chance of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow or something. I'm just going to try to appreciate the good warm days and stay inside.

Crap, fire pagers going off. Third time today. Bye yall!

Dawn

I actually agree with TR above. I hate the change...but I have found (having lived both North and South), that I actually hate static worse. Lol, we can't just be happy, can we ? Though I've now clocked like 3 days around 4F...that's too cold for Z7 (even though it's snick in the middle of the 0-5F min range)...then again, I guess we're spoiled by last years non-winter (15 for two or three days)

Having Lupus, heat is rough for me, but then, so is cold. I lean towards that week in April when it's spring, and that week in October when it's fall. June through August, I can spend just enough time outside, in the shade, to water and harvest, then it's back inside. Fall crops get planted in the dark or (with luck) in the rain. I'm trapped indoors by the heat far more than by the cold. Gardening just helps make the summer a bit more enjoyable. Other than that, I could do without it just fine.

I reversed the question to myself recently after a series of events.

Why do I choose to live where the weather and ___________ ( other stuff) is so crazy? Surely there has to be an easier place

I USED TO say at least we don't have earth quakes...

Oh mah gollies, Amy. So true. Dare I say well, at least won't don't have hurricanes or monsoons?

Yeah, Bon, don't tempt fate!

I think we did get spoiled with last year's non-winter, and I'd love to have that winter again, but it's not the one we're having right now.

Down here in our part of zone 7b, we've dropped as low as 2 degrees with this current cold spell, and that is too cold for 7b as well, but it's the weather we got and I guess we'll just have to deal with it. This morning we awakened to an overnight low of 35 degrees at our house which is just so much better, isn't it? It feels pretty normal outside today, though the wind chill still was below freezing when I was out feeding the chickens.

Rebecca, Methinks you are being too hard on Oklahoma because sometimes we get two weeks of Spring and two weeks of Autumn in between our summer and winter wacko weather. Well, maybe the two weeks aren't consecutive, but it still beats being somewhere where there's 6 months of winter or 9 months of summer. We do get a lot of variability, sometimes all in one week.

Kim, It is a good question, isn't it. I think it is because our hearts are where we're used to living, and home is where the heart is even if the weather is crazy. Maybe we would find it boring to wake up to the same weather day in and day out for months at a time. Anyway, the people here in this part of the country are so good and kind that I think it would be hard to find a match for that in some other places.

Bon, Anything can happen, you know, but let's hope it does not! Our DS is in California vacationing with his girlfriend (and meeting her family and all that) and their plans to take him here and there and show him this and that have been disrupted by little things like heavy rain, flooding, etc. that have closed places like Yosemite National Park, which they had intended to visit. It is kinda comical (but sad, if it is your vacation)---5 years of drought and they could have visited Yosemite at any time, but nope, they had to be there when some hopefully-drought-busting rains are flooding everywhere and closing things down. Still, I suspect they'd rather have the rain than not have it.

Have y'all been listening to the gloom and doom forecasts for this coming weekend's weather? I keep hoping they are wrong about the ice, though it would be fine with me if they are right about the rain. Who doesn't need rain in January? Now that the models might be coming into agreement a little more, NWS-Norman has issued a Special Weather Statement to warn us that something ugly may be headed this way. It might be a good weekend to stay inside and watch the NFL playoffs, order seeds, maybe start some seeds, etc., as long as your part of OK still has power. I think my part of OK probably will have power, but then, you never know. The forecast could change a lot between now and then.

Here's NWS-Norman's Special Weather Statement:

Special Weather Statement from NWS-Norman

The statement about significant accumulations of ice are a concern.

Bon, Watch out! Your area might have an icequake this coming weekend because, well, it is Oklahoma and anything can happen.

Dawn

My heart is where my grandson is for sure. But I have moved over 26 times and sometimes that gypsy/wanderlust kicks in high gear. The longest I ever lived anywhere was birth to 7 1/2 years old. I just hit 7 years here. Seems kinda strange not to be packing. And with all the stress recently I am ready for a change. Onion planting will help.

actually i was thinking this weekend that gardeners in Oklahoma are lunatics.i am ordering seeds as though they will grow and produce yummies.lol reading johnnies catalog for planting info.then reading about pests and blights etc makes me want to pass out.i am retooling the garden yet one more time this spring to give me more raised containers so we shall see....

Keep in mind, Johnny's is in Maine. Their climate is much different than ours.

yes thanks for reminder

Johnny's varieties always have performed extremely well for me, and I've been buying seeds from Johnny's since at least the very late 1980s or earliest 1990s. We still have a little red wheelbarrow (made of steel, back when you still could get kid's toys and garden tools made of steel) that I ordered for Chris with either my first or second seed order from Johnny's. The wheelbarrow has lasted forever, despite being left outside a lot. Most vegetable varieties that will perform in a cold climate also will perform in a hot climate, especially the warm-season ones. Flower varieties are more iffy, particularly the cool-season ones.

I've lived here all my life and traveled very little. My folks settled here during the run outside Pond Creek and Nash where I spent a lot of time but I grew up in Ponca City which I thought was a big city. I now live in OKC so I haven't moved very far. That said, I suppose I've never missed what I've never known and for a long time wasn't aware that our weather was all that strange (garden-wise) except for tornados. I thought I was just a lousy gardener or didn't water enough or whatever, it was my fault. I'd never given a lot of indepth thought to other parts of the US until I got on GW and 'listened' to people on other forums who live elsewhere.

I used to think those garden magazines were hyping pictures and then decided they were downright lying with fake pictures of plants and I'd been played for a sucker when mine never looked anything close to that but now I realize they just weren't shot (or grown) in Oklahoma. On some of the other forums on GW, those guys in the NE or Pacific NW show the 'same lyin' pictures of their gardens in summer.

I finally got wise during one of the droughts and started over, growing only native plants and prairie grasses. My prairie garden looks good and doesn't seem to care much about our weather. I figured the trick is don't fight it, go with it. I gave up trying to grow vegetables a long time ago.....

Get this. When I first started posting on the Perennial Forum which was composed of 90% NE'erners that had been on there forever like a clique and some people from the Pacific NW, those guys thought I was a troll and all I was doing was reporting it as it was. Worse yet, I was posting photos of my native weeds and prairie grasses talking about heat domes and drought and they didn't quite understand any of it. They assumed I was either acting up or that I lived in the desert part of the country rather than the bread basket & and cow country.

I never meant to suggest Johnny's seeds wouldn't work here. I love them! But their growing instructions tend to be like most of the others, geared for cooler climates than ours.

Yes, it's been my experience that you have to learn your climate and growing area/zone. That's part of the adventure/fun of it. Even moving 20 miles may change things quite a bit for you.

Leava, Yes, of course we are lunatics. A person would have to be a lunatic to try to garden here amidst the constant droughts, interspersed with flooding, and then not to mention hailstones constantly falling in Spring and early summer, tornadoes, severe T-storms, microbursts, blue northers, strong straightline winds, raging wildfires, ice storms, etc. So, lunatics we are. Gardening lunatics. Let's wear the title proudly!

When we moved here, if someone had told me we'd see 90 days with no rainfall to speak of, or at the other end of the spectrum over 12" of rainfall in one day (more than once, in fact), would it have deterred me from moving here with the intention of having a big garden? Not at all. Gardeners just have to garden no matter where they are.

TexasRanger, I bet they thought you were a troll at first. Gardening here is a whole different world. Let's use Fine Gardening magazine as an example. They always have such lovely photo spreads, but I look at them and mostly sigh and say "that would never look like that here, even if it would grow here, which it won't". (I will say they feature natives more frequently now than they did 10 or more years ago.)

It is hard to accept that we cannot just grow whatever we want to grow here, but I've learned some hard lessons and have shifted to plants that tolerate the conditions we have here. I don't have time or resources to expend on plants that need lots of extra attention in order to have even a chance of surviving here.

Amy, I agree. I just didn't want for anyone to think that you meant their seeds wouldn't grow here. Instructions? There's instructions? Heck, I ignore those instructions, always assuming they are geared to a climate that's not ours. I freely admit I do not read seed packet instructions. That's doubly true with cool-season seeds that have to be planted in winter here, and that is not always clear because for some of those northern seed companies, the cool-season flower grow and bloom all summer. Ha! As if that would happen here. In the 1980s I quickly learned not to trust gardening magazines or seed catalogs because they would show lovely things like delphiniums and snapdragons as summer plants. Well, maybe they are summer plants somewhere, but not here. That's one reason I try to avoid most nurseries early in Spring. They often have beautiful perennials in full bloom for sale, but once you get them home here and plant them, they're already peaking and going to decline quickly as we heat up. Mother Nature in Oklahoma is a hard taskmaster.

dbarron, My closest local gardening friend, Fred, gardens a little less than a mile from me, but we are in a creek hollow that's much more low-lying than his place up on a ridge. He can easily plant 2-4 weeks before we can and give no thought to protecting his plants from cold nights, and he likes to give me hell (in a friendly way) because I haven't planted yet. If I planted when he planted, it all most likely would freeze. Sometimes I cannot believe the difference between his place and ours. Along the same line of thinking, we have gardening friends 2 or 3 miles north of us and they can not and will not plant warm-season crops as early as I do. In their case, they are more exposed to cold winter wind and haven't found any upside (and many downsides) to planting as early as I do. So, we all have our own routines that work for us in our specific spots, even though we're all not very far apart at all. I also know someone who used to garden in 3 different spots within a few miles of each other, and he had different planting times for each place. I cannot imagine how great the differences would be 20 miles away considering how great they are in a much smaller distance. Microclimate is everything, and I don't think I truly realized that when we first moved here in 1999, but Mother Nature taught me quickly.

Dawn

I am so dreading this weekend. The last bad ice storm we had here in Sw OKC was in December 2007. So I guess ten years would be about right for another one. This kind of weather just makes me a nervous wreck. No sleep, no food just walk the floors and hope the power stays on. It will take all day to get all of the steers fed instead of four hours and that just stresses me out!!! We have put tons of hay out just in case it gets so bad we can't get to them with the mixer. I know weather is out of our hands but I still get so stressed!!! I guess we will just have to wait till everything plays out. At least it will warm up quickly, but it just takes a small amount of ice to stop everything in its tracks. Why can't we just get snow and rain??? Why ice?????

Thanks guys for listening to my weather rant. Just had to get it out!!!!

stockergal, I truly hope you luck out and the freezing line stays north of you. You never know---it could happen. You sure don't need another storm like 2007. Hang in there and know we'll be thinking of y'all and wishing you the best if the ice hits. At least it will be relatively short-lived.

Some models show the ice mostly staying NW of OKC, so let's hope those are the correct ones. No one can be sure until everything converges and they see where the freezing line stops.

I hope you have a backup generator or some form of non-electric heat available if the power goes out.

Why ice? Because the air won't be cold enough for snow. I'd rather have snow than ice too, but I'd prefer to have neither, and I'm so far south that heavy rain/flooding is more likely down here than ice, unless the forecast is incredibly wrong....and I don't think it is.

Flooding with the amount of rainfall they are showing for us doesn't scare me. A few inches won't be that bad. We've had at least two days since moving here when we got 12+ inches of rain in one day, so a forecast for 2-5" sounds like a piece of cake by comparison.

I hope you can enjoy today's beautiful sunny weather, and let's hope the heat and sunshine warm up the ground a lot today so the ice melts off as quickly as possible if it does fall over the next few days.

I expect the NWS will issue a Winter Weather Advisory sometime today/tonight and that will tell us where they think the worst weather is most likely.

Dawn