Rain Glorious Rain

This is a map of the rain in the last 24 hours for the state of Oklahoma. We got 1 1/2 inches!!!!! And it was the best kind...the slow non-stormy rain. All night long it rained. Lots of puddles on the ground but no street flooding. The kind of rain that will soak the ground not runoff into the storm drains.

Can you tell I'm a little excited. It had been so long since we had a good rain. We were in a drought last year and it never recovered. So we need the normal amount of rain plus extra to catch up. I would take this once a week for six months.

Guess what it did?

It RAINED!!!! You don't know how exciting that was this morning. And it was 68 degrees at 10am too. Miracles can happen.

We have had a few sprinkles at night the last couple of nights but mostly far off thunder of others getting more rain. But we had dark clouds and a good hour of rain. It will take a lot more to replenish the lakes/rivers/ground but it was a good start. The cooler temperatures remind us that yes summer can go away and that we will not be locked into 100 degrees for the rest of our lives.

Not quite sure if today will get over 90 degrees. We are tied for the most consecutive days of 90+ heat in Oklahoma City (71 days for those of you counting) and we are close to the record for most days over 100. Both of those records were set in 1980, thankfully before I lived in this state.

Weather Update

We did it! We finally had a day that was below 100 degrees. And it rained! Woohoo!

Yesterday somehow we were blessed with rain. This is after our city and many around us have gone on water rationing. (I have come up with some creative ways to conserve water but everyone seems to be against me not bathing). It started with some lightning and thunder and dark clouds up north. Then we had a few drops. Then it rained. I finally got home from work and it seemed to be over. But no, we had a huge wind come through and then bam, a true downpour. It was so wonderful. I wanted to go out in it and get wet but it was lightning and I thought that was a little too dangerous.

The air was very humid but much cooler. Not cool enough to open the windows but the air conditioning didn't run as much.

Of course today is going to be hot but I think we might avoid 100 degrees again today. Cross our fingers on that one.

Microburst - What a Storm!

Tuesday night we had a microburst. That is a storm that whips up 60+mph winds, lots of rain and hail. I was at a restaurant with a friend and we kept checking the weather on his Iphone. We were sitting next to windows and kept looking at the clouds. All of a sudden things started banging and wooshing. The front door was opening/closing so the staff locked it. And it monsoon rained. Whitney called from home (thank goodness she had made it there from the mall) and said it was a monsoon and hail there. The neighbor's tree in the back had split. The power was flickering. At the restaurant we got quarter sized hail.

Do not do this

And the roads flooded really bad. Tree limbs across the street came down and luckily missed a car. I knew I wasn't going anywhere for awhile so we ordered dessert. What else could we do? When we finally decided the road had gone down enough to drive through, I went home. We only missed really bad damage by a couple of blocks. I passed several large trees down.



Downtown building



There was a great deal of hail/wind damage downtown.

And about 1 1/2 mile from my house there were downed power lines. An apartment complex had its roof ripped off. We did lose a big branch on our front tree but we had power all night. About 1/3 of the town was without it. We didn't have cable or internet until lunch on Wednesday so we really didn't know what had happened other places.