Wow. 0" in the pan handle. Looks like it's 1.1" up towards our way. Sounds about right. My rain gauge broke so I haven't been tracking recently.

The panhandle and parts of western Oklahoma haven't had rain (well, haven't had at least 0.10" in one 24-hour recording period, and I think most haven't had any) since early October. Here's the map that shows how many days......

Consecutive Days With Less than 0.10" Rainfall

When I'm looking at our dry dusty ground (the clay literally has turned to dust the consistency of a very fine cake flour) and feeling sorry for myself, I look at this map and stop thinking about my area (think it is 54 days without rain now...) and looking at those 120s and 130s out in western OK and feel sorry for them instead. If we'd been 137 days without meaningful rainfall here, I wouldn't be planting anything at all because there would be do point.

Many people in western OK make the living from agriculture, one way or another, and it always is challenging since they tend to be hot and dry most of the time. This year, they're just more seriously challenged than in some other years.

Lots of grass-fires-turned-wildfires in western OK today, including here in our county and in counties around us in southwestern and southcentral OK, just adding to the misery---every time someone lose a hayfield or pasture, or their hay bales and barn, life just gets infinitely more challenging.

I'm thankful lack of rainfall to that extent is not something we have to deal with, at least not usually. My grandma has told me of a 3 year drought we supposedly had in the early 50's when she was a little girl, and the fields were mostly dirt. She said her dad had to buy hay. She mentioned him eventually buying a piece of wooded property and letting the cows eat the leaves off the trees for food. Droughts like that are very rare up here.

Have you ever been to the Rita Blanca National Grassland in the northern Texas panhandle, Dawn? The Oklahoma and Texas panhandles are very pretty in areas. We were there last May. Everything was fairly green at the time. I wonder what it looks like now after having no rain for 137 days.

My numbers are significantly up thanks to the past week!

Carol

I think most of us can say the same. I'll link the 10-day map so we can see the totals captured since rain began falling last Friday night or Saturday, depending on one's location.

10-Day Rainfall Accumulation Map