even this far from water.
My rain gauge shows about 5" since yesterday afternoon, and we got off light compared to some areas west & southwest of here. They had heavier rains, strong winds and some tornados yesterday evening through last night. The storm came through Texas, into southwest OK and then looped north & east, wetting all over the place as it went.
There's a system called Mesonet in the state, observation stations for the National Weather Service*. A little earlier I heard one of the weather weenies saying that it sends in wind readings every five minutes, and for a couple of hours in some areas it kept reporting wind speeds in the 60's. We get lots of storms and such with gusts in the 60's, but continuous winds of that speed aren't real common around here. Lots of damage, lots of power & phone lines down.
And lots of flooding, to the degree of closing down I-40 out west for hours due to water flowing across the highway. Hard enough and deep enough to wash a semi into the median.
Now it's moving further off to the east and we should have just some sprinkles or light stuff before it clears out completely. A little rain to water the landscape would have been nice, but this was not needed; most ponds and lakes and reservoirs are still as full as they've ever been from the rains May-July. Downright messy out there.
*Interesting system. They wanted to expand it years ago and wound up making a deal with the state law enforcement network. They set up stations(usually at/near a police or sheriff's dept) and hook up to the LE network; that way they could set up a lot more stations, with people nearby who can check the equipment if it drops off, and they didn't have to pay for independant circuits to move the data.
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