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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 21, 2023 12:54:30 GMT -6
We've officially surpassed the 12" inch mark for rain, year to date here. We've had .37" of an inch of rain so far today. That, tacked on to the 11.64" we already had over the last 79 days brings our total to 12.01" inches, year to date.
46° was our high today, but tomorrow promises to be a balmy 75° almost too much to hope for after the several days long cold spell we've just experienced.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 22, 2023 7:22:15 GMT -6
That sure is a lot of rain. If it keeps up, you’ll need a pontoon boat! Did you get anymore last night?
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 23, 2023 5:48:57 GMT -6
I don't think we got any more rain last night (Tuesday night).
Yesterday, it was 76° out, but the sun never shined all day long. (Thank goodness). I was outside all day long driving T-posts, I would have melted down if the sun had ever come out.
Right now at 6:30 am, it's already 66° outside and threatening to rain some more. We have a 90% chance of rain here over the next two days and I see that the National Weather Service has issued a Code Yellow, Flood Watch for our area.
Did you guys over in Central Oklahoma get any rain today? It looked like you might have a fair chance of that when I looked at the radar images this morning.
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Post by woodeye on Mar 23, 2023 6:07:25 GMT -6
I haven't been outside yet this morning, but I don't think it rained any during the night here. Today is supposedly going to be a different story, especially this afternoon. I'm even in a "Flood Watch"⛈️ I think FrostyTurnip is in for rain this afternoon too, I hope it's rain and not just wind and hail, just have to wait and see. Chester is back in the hospital, so I'm going to Shawnee today, but hope to be back home before the worst gets here.🤞
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 23, 2023 6:50:52 GMT -6
Hang tight heavyhitterokra I know you’re no stranger to danger, but what worries me (and probably you) is how soon you’ll get out there and tend to the garden. Indeed, I need to till as well. When I planted my potatoes, I ditched the worry over summer drought and raised their grade so they won’t drown like the last two springs. I can only imagine how muggy it was for you working on that barricade.
Yesterday was overcast with the sun peeking out occasionally in our area, perfect for setting out the pepper plants and magnificent for weeding.
But this morning is for battening down the hatches and moving all the growies indoors lest they get beaten to death.
Buckle up.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 23, 2023 16:57:33 GMT -6
We live on a hill, so flooding doesn't get too bad here. The worst we've ever had was water an inch or so deep running through what used to be our garage, but the garden is another matter. It's several feet below our house in elevation. We've had some years that the water got up to the second strand of barbed wire in or fencerows down there. I might be glad later that I've not had a chance to plow it yet this Spring.
That and the geese have set three nest spots on that same lower elevation. I feel sorry for them, just setting out there in the open, on their clutches of eggs in the pouring rain. I built nest boxes for them inside the barn, but only one of them chose to use one of the sheltered nest boxes. Sometimes, it's really hard to provide for them that way because they all have minds of their own and don't use the things we provide for them.
That's probably how God feels about us sometimes.
The National Weather Service has upgraded our Yellow Flood Watch to a Red Flood Warning, so I'm guessing a lot of folks around here on the lower ground will be having a tough time of it for the next few days. Our forecast calls for 100% chance of severe thunderstorms tonight, possibly into tomorrow as well.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 23, 2023 20:08:52 GMT -6
That's probably how God feels about us sometimes.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 24, 2023 4:23:55 GMT -6
Have you guys over in Midwest Oklahoma or Southern Texas areas gotten any rain from this ongoing storm yet? We've got about 2.5" inches here so far. Not quite as much as forecasters feared yesterday (which is good). Our ground was already saturated from the wet winter that we've had. According to them, we have a 100% chance of additional severe thunderstorms today, then maybe things will settle down a bit for an extended period of time.
I hope so, I need to get some much-needed work done in my garden. I usually do all that sort of stuff in February, but this year, the entire month of February was a rainout.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Mar 24, 2023 7:16:51 GMT -6
We’ve had some humid mornings with mists and sprinkles off and on since last week. From March 16 through March 21, I total up about 85 hundredths of an inch. It’s gray this morning, and apparently there are some showers to our west that are weakening and dissipating, but there’s still a possibility of some rain before everything clears up in the later morning. I’m hoping for a good downpour, but we’ll see.
Apparently the overall weather pattern now has shifted from the “La Niña” pattern that has been keeping us dry to a more neutral pattern, so there’s more likelihood of normal rainfall. Unfortunately it would take a lot more than our normal rainfall to break our long-term drought. Normal rainfall is still a lot better than none, though, so I hope we do get that. (hat would mean about ten inches of rainfall between now and summer, I believe, since May is one of the rainier months around here historically.
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Post by woodeye on Mar 24, 2023 17:19:43 GMT -6
According to iWeatherNet, I didn't get all that much rain last night, but there is water standing in my yard and in the swale at the Iron Curtain, so at least my ground is soaked up pretty well now. My place was situated between the heavier amounts of rain, Wellston got over 2" of rain and Meeker got over 3 inches of rain. From the looks of things, any rain that I would have gotten over the .55" that is shown on the website for my place would have all ran off anyway. Very happy with the rain that I got, and all of it has essentially soaked in, or is in the process of soaking in.😉
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 24, 2023 18:29:07 GMT -6
Up in Wet Prairie, Oklahoma, between Jay, and Grove, they got 5.5" inches of rain. Over just East of Pryor, they got 6.2" inches. I think we only got about 2.6" inches here. The dry creek behind the house is running strong, but no flooding.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 24, 2023 18:50:24 GMT -6
Chrys, did you get any more wet stuff? I’m assuming not. Even if ya did, not much and it’s not enough. I totally get it. We are too wet to even weed, but I know it’s not enough if it doesn’t rain again soon. For us, it’s the WIND. Rains good, soaks and them BAM. Next day it’s windy and dries up.
Heavy hitter, I’m starting to worry. You’re usually plowed by now or about to start.
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Post by chrysanthemum on Mar 24, 2023 20:40:17 GMT -6
We had a brief moment this morning where I actually heard some rain come down, but it was very short-lived. When I brought my seedlings in for the night tonight, there was no water standing in their trays at all, so it didn’t amount to much. I never made it to the garden to check the rain gauge, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t actually a measurable amount. (Edited to add: I just checked iweathernet.com, and they have us as getting 0.08 inches of rain in the last day. That could be right.) I know what you mean about the wind. We’ve been having a lot of it here, too. Last summer it made for so many wildfires. woodeye , I’m glad that swale at the back of your garden seems to be holding some water to soak in there. That’s great.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 24, 2023 21:00:45 GMT -6
I usually plow in the Autumn to let the roots get frozen really well during winter. Then since I plant cover crops, I have to wait until early-April to get the most benefit out of them before I plow them under for the green manure they provide. This year, my cover crops failed due to drought in October, so basically, my garden was already plowed. still, I really needed to plow it again in February.
I usually dedicate the entire month of February to gardening chores, raking mulch beds, piling huge quantities of leaves, hauling manure, and so on; that's a good way to stay warm and to get back into shape for Spring planting.
February this year was a total washout, it rained so often that it never dried up enough to plow. I did manage to get all 1,600 of my old okra stalks chopped down though. I've also got 5 or 6 rows of plastic torn out.
The forecast is calling for the rain to let up this week and also calls for several days of 25-30 mph winds with temperatures in the mid-sixties, so maybe it will dry up some later next week?
In the meantime, I've been so busy tearing out my old garden fence and building a new one that I've not had the energy or stamina to do anything else. I've driven 64 steel posts and I got 32 cattle panels hung so far. Now that I've got three sides of my new fence built, hopefully, I'll have more time to get busy tearing out the rest of the plastic, so I can plow.
Once everything is all cleaned up and plowed, I'll need to start raising beds and laying new plastic. When my irrigation work is done, I'll go ahead and finish my fence. If I finish it now, I'll just have to tear it back down so I can drive the tractor out with the 12 rows of plastic that I haven't laid yet, unless I leave a twenty-foot margin at the end of each row to raise my mulcher up and turn around before I hit the fence.
I had a chance to plow and lay plastic last week, but I helped a couple of buddies plow and lay 5,500' feet of Plasticulture on another farm instead.
This time of year is always so busy!
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 25, 2023 13:09:10 GMT -6
Yeah, you’ll get dry by next week with those temps and wind.
You’re not kidding about it being busy this time of year! I’ve never had so many growies and animals before.
I told the fam good-bye two ago in a sort of joking- but not joking kind of way. Indeed, the laundry is behind and the dishes are piled high more often than not.
It takes me and the two kids to haul the growies inside every night and out again the next morning. I select the trays and hand them to one at the door and we form a train. And that’s not the pepper plants! With picking up the birds every morning, too, they’re getting grumpy about it.
But then, they started seeing the brassica seedlings get big and were thinking it would be over soon when I can offload more into the ground, but there I was loading up more trays with fresh seed. Time for spring crops!
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