What's your weather like right now?

[txdirtdog]

Thunderstorms came in last night and brought some cooler temps with them. 62F at 10:30AM. Low for the week is supposed to be 48F tomorrow night. Then moving back into the mid 70'sF/mid 60'sF for the remainder of the week.

Raining very light drops, but mass quantity of them right now. With just a breeze, the rain is moving at a strong angle.

[stratcat]

We had 17.5F this morning! Just can't seem to shake these cold temperatures. Before noon,
we're not 40F yet and it's not going to get much warmer today. The NWS site has snowflakes
in the forecast pane for Saturday and Sunday.

[daylilydude]

We are at 50°f right now with some scattered rain, probably not going to warm up more than that today, but the next couple of days we sre supposed to see some 70's for highs and 50's for the lows so its gardening time here me thinks... lol!

[Laura_in_FL]

60F now at 5:15 p.m. and breezy, with a light rain. It has rained off and on all day today, mostly light rain. Which is great, because most of it should soak in rather than run off.

It looks like some heavier rain is about to blow onshore. We are expecting more rain and T-storms tonight and all day tomorrow. It's good to have the rain, since April and May are usually dry months here.

[kctomato]

Right now it's dark


The weather this week looks pretty good. The urn-yuns shood b happy.

This time of year I focus on night time temps:

[izitmidnight]

TDD take your rain back! I've had enough. Another 2 inches to start in 10 hours over a two day period! Although it could bring us finally out of a drought that wast "extreme" and lasting for 2 years. Which is a good thing....

[txdirtdog]

Apr 3, 2013 23:20:25 GMT -5 izitmidnight said:

TDD take your rain back! I've had enough. Another 2 inches to start in 10 hours over a two day period! Although it could bring us finally out of a drought that wast "extreme" and lasting for 2 years. Which is a good thing....

Sorry you're having so much so close together. I'll gladly hang on to some more here as long as it doesn't come with baseball sized hail like happened a couple of miles down the road that I found out about this morning on the weather channel. I've never seen baseball sized hail and I hope I never do!

Temps this morning are in the low 50's, with an intermittent wind that raises goose-bumps. Rained again last night and moisture in the air is thick.

[kctomato]

I saw baseball sized hail once. Two days after a friend made his final payment on his car. Wasn't a thing he could do. We all stood about 5ft from the window and laughed. Would have been suicide to run out and try to do something about it. 1/2 block away there was no damage.


It's amazing it didn't do more damage to the roof of his house.

[kctomato]

so begineth my seasonal hell

I'm pretty sure these numbers have gone up since this AM

Attachments:

[txdirtdog]

Apr 4, 2013 11:18:48 GMT -5 kctomato said:

I saw baseball sized hail once. Two days after a friend made his final payment on his car. Wasn't a thing he could do. We all stood about 5ft from the window and laughed. Would have been suicide to run out and try to do something about it. 1/2 block away there was no damage.


It's amazing it didn't do more damage to the roof of his house.

Wow! Hope he was well insured. That's insult to injury just 2 days after being free of the payment.

Feel for the allergy sufferers among us. As a kid I had allergies to dumb things such as house dust and feathers. Grandma had feather beds and wall to wall carpeting that had been around a number of decades. Loved those trips where my lips turned inside out and had to sleep upright in a recliner to breathe enough to continue living through the night. Even the series of shots didn't stop that. Outgrew it as an adult for the most part. Vacuuming can still set off a mild response. Memories!

[kctomato]

I had childhood allergies and asthma. They went away pre-teen. One time in my early 20's I had asthma come back. When I moved out to central Ks the burning of the fields (usually Feb) and then again when wheat pollen came out I started to get allergy problems again. I also started having more problems being exposed to gramoxone (diquat) herbicides used in the research fields. Now "diquat" is common in many herbcides. It's even mixed in with RoundUp . My allergies went away when I moved to NC at first. The pollen there didn't bother me because I did not grow up expsoed to it. However on the research farm I got exposed to diquat again and experimental fungicides which gave me awful headaches. Granted I NEVER sprayed any of the chemicals. Just that they were so widely used and present in the areas I was working. When I moved back to the KC area all my childhood allergies came back. I am fricking allergic to everything - cats, dogs, dust, mites, various molds, diesel and 2 stroke exhaust and just about any kind of pollen that blows in the wind here. Also have some food allergies. I wear a good dust mask when transplanting or mixing soil.

I know about sleeping upright in a chair. In the past several years I have felt asthmatic at times but I always breathe just well enough not to be considered asthma - still feels like an anvil is on my chest sometimes and I have a hard time with stairs. Its always bad for me March-May and Sept-Oct. Worse part of it all are the migraines. Sometimes 3-4 a week. I am still trying to figure out all my migraine triggers. Most are foods but when pollen counts go high my migraines frequency also goes up. I have had luck finding some triggers and have reduced that number (knock on wood) but I am still considered as having chronic migraines.

So I watch the pollen counts. And the weather.

If I could move to somewhere like Arizona or Southern California I would just to avoid all these issues. I'd even give up tomatoes to be rid of pollen allergies and migraines. The only thing that has come close to migraine pain was a marble sized kidney stone that was stuck in me 2 years ago.

[stratcat]

That talk about the trip to Grandma's takes me back to staying at my Grandparent's
farm with the feather ticks and pillows. I can feel the congestion and my eyes are
ready to water.

[Laura_in_FL]

Wow, so many allergy sufferers here! I am allergic to dust, mold, cats, dogs, and a lot of different pollens, especially tree pollens. (Thankfully the tree pollen season is just about done here.)

My allergies didn't really become a problem until I was in my 20s. I had terrible sinus headaches and was always exhausted because I couldn't sleep due to the congestion. Trying to sleep with my head in weird positions (so I could breathe) ended up messing up my neck. My neck finally got so stiff I could only turn my head about 20 degrees to either side and even that hurt bad. Plus I had brutal tension headaches on top of the sinus headaches. I've only had a few migraines, but let me tell you, the combo tension/sinus headaches were near the migraines in pain intensity. And when I woke up with one, I knew I was in for it all day, because the ones I woke up with were the bad ones that were hard to get under control. I can feel my neck tensing up just thinking about it. (Time to pause and do some stretching...okay, I'm back.)

I took a few years of the allergy shots - I had to get 4 shots per session because they had to include so many allergens - plus I had to take nasal steroids and a prescription antihistamine/decongestant. When my neck finally got really bad, I spent a lot of time with a chiropractor and physical therapist. But eventually I got better.

Now I use a daily antihistamine (dust and mold are present 365 days a year, and impossible to avoid completely) and sleep with a Breathe Right strip. That's usually enough, except during tree pollen season. Then I go sign the "potential criminals log" to get real decongestants for a few weeks to see me through. (The decongestants on the shelf now are crap, all but useless...I need pseudoephedrine to get any real relief.) I miss my cat (she died a couple of years ago) but I am healthier
without a furry pet in the house. After she died we got rid of most of
the carpet and that has helped, too. I also try not to be stupid about pollen and mold exposure, but being a gardener I get stupid occasionally.

KC, I know what you mean about the asthma. I have been tested a few times and always been told I am not asthmatic. But there are times when I sound a little wheezy and feel a little labored, mostly after I do something stupid like spreading old, wet, bagged leaves without wearing a mask.

I hope the pollen season is not too bad for you this year. Where I live, it wasn't as bad this year as last year. Maybe the same will hold true for you.

[kctomato]

I have the neck issues too. Called "occiptal headaches" or occipital neuralgia. These used to be a big deal for me but now seem minor. They were partly related to a shoulder injury and partly because I had an infection under a filling.

Learning more about migraines it is suspected that many people, even doctors, confuse minor migraines with sinus headaches. That's not to say one doesnt get sinus issues. More that they somehow could be related.

The allergy clinic that does those readings said a few days ago that it is likely we will get the majority of trees flowering at one time. So as it hits its going to be bad. Really this is better i think. Last year one groups would start and another would start as it finished. This lasted over several months. But since things are behind this year that may not be so drawn out.

Already feel my eyes watering and some congestion.

Netti pots help me. At first they bothered me but now that short term bother is made up for by the longer lasting bit of relief I get from rinsing the allergens out.


I could tell that yesterday's morning readings had gone up by yesterday evening.

It's hard to know otherwise if this year will be bad. Since we had am extreme drought last year it may make the trees produce more flowers. However if they don't have the energy that may not happen. Many trees have simply died from last years drought. It was that bad.

Its terrible of me but I hope for late freezes to kill flower buds. That or rain.

Here is today's comment from the Allergy lab

As we get more moderate temperatures we will see our pollen count start to rise. Many of our local elm trees have finished pollinating for the year so we may not have any more high elm counts. But, our oak and cottonwood trees have not even started to put on flowering structures so we can still expect plenty of pollen in the air before Spring is over.

[txdirtdog]

Wow, so much pain and suffering from so many regarding allergies/asthma!

Several of you have mentioned the things I've done such as netti pots (really weird to use, but good benefit), shots, breathe rite strips (surprising those things really work!) and antihystamines. The best relief I ever rec'd for simple allergies was from a new product the doctor wanted to sample me with when I was a kid. Dimetapp which was an OTC. Dried everything up lickety-split! I lived on that stuff for several years. I looked for it a couple years ago and couldn't find it. What happened? Was it one of the banned ones?

KC, I can't imagine the misery you must live with. I hope the season is short and mild for you.

Laura, sounds like you've mostly got your remedy down. Hope it continues to work well for you.

Strat, if you're in this too, sounds like feathers and house dust is more common allergens than I thought. I forgot to add cats, but that is only the long-haired varieties. Short hairs don't bother me. Guess my allergies are pretty selective. (I'd put the roll-eyes smilie here, but not positive which one it is).

[stratcat]

Sure, house dust, too. As I spend lots of time outside, pollen irritates me. My left eye has
been wanting to water for days. Smoke is quite an irritant. Houses on either side of me
have corn burning stoves vented out the wall with no chimney putting the smoke up high.
One is a house built on a slab, so that smoke vents knee high. The other house also vents
low. People still burn garbage and leaves...

Then there were decades of playing in bars breathing all that smoke. Don't know what I
miss the most; the drunks or the cigarettes.

When I'm having extra congestion or a sinus infection, I've been rinsing my nose with
a NeilMed Sinus Rinse squeeze bottle. It took me a while to get used to waterboarding
myself, but it has helped me feel better.

[kctomato]

Apr 5, 2013 18:39:21 GMT -5 stratcat said:

Then there were decades of playing in bars breathing all that smoke. Don't know what I
miss the most; the drunks or the cigarettes.

When I'm having extra congestion or a sinus infection, I've been rinsing my nose with
a NeilMed Sinus Rinse squeeze bottle. It took me a while to get used to waterboarding
myself, but it has helped me feel better.

HAHA! "water boarding myself". That's exactly what I use. Only the netti pot version.

Actually it was a good day. I felt watery eyes but not as stuffy as yesterday. The weather was nice.

The wintered spinach is young and tender. We'll be eating that for awhile.

[stratcat]

We're a little above freezing with snow flurries falling right now.
Yesterday, the National Weather Service said we'd have up to an inch
of accumulating snow today. Now, they're forecasting rain, but I'm seeing
snow.

How did you winter the spinach, KC?

[kctomato]

The spinach is seeded in early to mid fall. So it gets a chance to come up before it really gets cold and form crowns.

Then I cover the plants with leaves, remay or even plastic (which requires more effort on sunny days and to water even in winter).

When the weather starts to get warm, or when one would normally start to seed spinach here, I just remove the cover and I already have plants which readily take off.

Them developing in the cool weather makes the taste outstanding.

[paulf]

Upper seventies and a rainstorm on the southern horizon. Maybe we will get some liquid precipitation tonight.

[paulf]

Seven tenths of an inch came down very gently and soaked in.

[izitmidnight]

Apr 8, 2013 8:03:33 GMT -5 paulf said:

Seven tenths of an inch came down very gently and soaked in.

Nothing better than a gentle soaking rain!

62' at 930 am, summer is here. Time to turn on the AC...

[kctomato]

got about 1¾" along with quarter size hail last night

more severe weather tomorrow night

then cold again

but drought is easing (we were in the dark brown about 7 months ago)

[kctomato]

[txdirtdog]

I bet that stone is a lot more accurate than the meteorologist!

Apparently the allergy discussion was a no-no for me. I haven't had a bad-bad allergy attack in a very long while. Last couple days I have been hit hard. To top it off, I vacuumed last night. Forgot that breathing was THAT important. :<

[izitmidnight]

Take care all of you who are in the Severe weather path these next few days.

Kctomato, I am sorry to hear about the hail. Did you have any garden damage? Hopefully, the next round of hail will miss you.

As for here, a high of 78' today. The clouds are starting to move in, but the t=-storms are still 3 days away.

[kctomato]

It did shred some of the larger leaves on the spinach. It will alright. Onions and garlic looked unphased.

I heard some storms 2nite but tomorrow afternoon is when the bad stuff is supposed to happen again. Higher chance for tornadoes just south of me.

[kctomato]

Sorry TDD

If we get replenishing rains after hard drought years plants/molds could be flowering/fruiting like crazy.

[txdirtdog]

I think that is exactly what is happening KC. We've had a good deal more moisture at this point in the season than the last 2 years had.

Hope you weather the storms without incident.

[stratcat]

As I write this, there's a Tornado Warning in Nebraska along with Severe Thunderstorm Warnings,
Winter Storm Warnings and even Blizzard Warnings going on out in the Plains and Rockies. Interesting
to see the warm severe weather next to the cold severe weather.

Here are a couple links I use to check on the weather.

National Weather Service Central Region Headquarters

Storm Prediction Center Convective Outlooks

I'd say we got about 1 1/2" of rain Monday. At 9p, I was out for a walk and rain was spitting on my
glasses at 39F. We have another shot at snow, sleet and rain later this week with the high on
Thursday at 33F. Winter's not over.

Be safe, everyone.