Skie,
We're going through the same thing here, but the smoke is from ranchers deliberately burning pasture. The wind blows the smoke into the city and my asthma wears me out!
We've had 2 hailstorms so far, and believe it or not, we got hail at our house, but no rain! It is sooooo dry on this side of town that I water every time I get a chance. The rains swerve north and south of us every time. It sure looks like we're heading for a severe drought this year. Hope I'm wrong on that...
Cindi

UPDATE: Got some mushy hail. Have to call it hail as it was in round form, but mushed almost on impact, so it was very very wet. Yay! Free Moisture! :)

Yay for Toni!

We've gotten more moisture in the past 3 days than we have all year. It drizzled a small bit last night and again this morning.. I think we've gotten almost half an inch! Woohoo! hey, when it's this damned dry, a flock of birds flying overhead would help! LOL But everything's greening up finally... of course the golf courses are pretty green But the crabapples are blossoming everywhere (except for at home.. they always are last) and my lilacs are starting to swell. I can't wait because this year I'll have Dappled Dawn (http://www.jardinflorilege.com...), Mount Baker (http://davesgarden.com/guides/...), Charles Joly (http://davesgarden.com/guides/...), Common lilac... and for the first time my Primrose lilac will blossom! (http://cdn.springgarden.ca/ima...). I'll have to get pix when everyone's blossoming. I have a couple of others (James MacFarlane, Wedgwood, & Saugeana) but they won't be blossoming this year probably.

Woo-hoo!

yyyaaa Toni !!!!! I love lilacs I only have one and its the old fashion purple I would love to get a yellow one
Gloria

Gloria - Primrose lilacs are not very yellow... I've never actually seen one in person blooming because they're extremely extremely EXTREMELY rare. I looked for 4 years before I found one... at Lowes at that!! They were the little tiny 1 quart buckets so it hasn't blossomed.. but this year I know that it will this year, it has at least 2-3 flower buds on it! I'm so excited.. I can't wait to see it! I've seen pictures where they're truly yellow, I've seen pictures where they're a creamy yellow, and I've seen pictures that make them look like parchment yellow/white. Only time will tell what mine will blossom out. I want to get a couple of more James McFarlane as I don't have hardly any pink flowers anywhere.

I think after the get done tearing my front yard up when they put the water in I would like a row of different lilacs across it
Gloria

I love lilacs! I wish I had more space to dedicate to plants that got 5-15 big! I have my massive lilac in the front (she's about 12' tall, about 8' wide and about 20 years old), and a smaller common lilac in the back (only about 6' tall, 10' around.. I trimmed it pretty harshly a few years ago) that are older. I've put in 3 maturish Charles Joly & 1 "teenager" (like 4'square) Mount Baker, but my Primroses, James McFarlanes, Dappled Dawn (shade tolerant), Wedgwood, & Saugeana are all babies (Dappled dawn is like a pre-teen being about 3' tall & about 2' around). They just take forever to grow, but they're so worth it! If you can afford the bigger bushes (10-15gal), I'd recommend buying those. HD usually has them starting now for like $50/ea. But it's instant flowers!

Toni where did you get dapple dawn and mount baker? I'm looking all over for beauty of moscow also. Most of mine bloomed last week. The whole yard smelled heavenly. Today the ginnala maples are blooming and that scent is almost as sweet.

Dappled Dawn came from Nicks gardens & Mount Baker came from Tagawa Gardens, both local garden stores. Dappled is pretty rare, I haven't seen it but for the one place, Nicks, & they don't have it yet this year. Mount Baker is pretty common, I've seen it at home depot before. Beauty of Moscow is pretty common too; that was at Walmart last year.

I picked up a very nice 4' James MacFarlane lilac today. Cheap, too, as it was only $39.99 - 20%. nice size for the price. going to dig up the two Staghorn Sumacs I have & replace them with lilacs.

Wow, Toni, I'm jealous. You have good nurseries out there. No way will our walmart or HDs carry good lilacs--they just get ones that say Persian Lilac and that's it, or maybe Miss Kim...
cindi

Saturday it was 81 degs. Sunday, 85. Broke some records for heat. Today, it snowed this morning and it's drizzling now. I know that in NM they could definitely use the rain, especially in southern NM where there's been horrific fires and drought (haven't had any rain since October). But, I'm going to be greedy & try to keep it here for as long as possible. This helps a lot with our drought. I sincerely believe that the seasons are about 7 weeks off.. we didn't get winter for almost 2 months past when it should have hit, and now spring is coming in about 2 months late, too.

That balances out our early summer - 90s and drought. Then there's the wind. I don't remember ever before having such relentless wind! Many years ago they used to blame weather oddities on nuclear bomb testing. Now it seems to be the fault of either El Nino or La Nina...

PPal - well, we could blame the Japanese nuclear plants, but we've been having this messed up weather for about a year now, so that would throw that outta wack.

Been raining steadily since at least 5am. They're predicting 1-4" of snow.. but I don't think it's gonna get cold enough to snow and, if it does, it'll be mush.

Oh my roses are going to love this!!!! I can't wait! My trees have been slowly waking up... this should jump-start 'em. But, unfortunately, it also jumpstarts the weeds too.

We had 100 degrees on monday, broke all the records. Didn't mind the heat, it was the steady 3o mph wind that got to me.
Today it's 71 with constant lightning and a little bit of rain blowing here and there. We need rain soooo badly. I hope that steady rain keeps going all the way from your place to mine, because everyone in between us needs it desperately.

Keep that rain coming; we need it too.

The high here is supposed to be in the low seventies all week. It's only just above freezing at 4AM, though. Oh well, I guess that keeps evaporation low. Here's hoping for rain. We need it, too.

Second day straight of rain. And it's a slow steady heavier-than-a-drizzle, but not a downpour. You know, the awesome soak-up-into-the-ground type rain? We got lucky, it didn't snow much in my area. Some parts of the metro got 2-4" and in the mountains there was 12-18" of the wet sloppy snow. It's tearing up the roads (I70 has been shut down due to potholes all over the place, but that is such a crappy road through town, it needs to be shut down 100% and repaved for the full 60 miles in town, not to mention replacing like 10 of the bridges that shed concrete every time a rig drives on it), but we need it so desperately. Supposed to fade out this afternoon (this storm's gonna be here for a while.. it's still blowing west and that means it gets stuck on the mountains and just bounces off them right onto the metro) but another pass of moisture this weekend. This is gonna SO help my new roses & lilacs...

I'm so happy for you !!!! I bet the people that are flooding would love to send you some of there water