Day Three-Fifty-Four - Texas Weather :-(

What the hell happened????  I thought it was spring.  I'm pretty sure it must be spring.  I put a spring flag on my garden flagpole outside of my front door just the other day.  I live in Dallas where seasons are generally magnified times 5.  You know, in summer it is usually 5 times hotter than you want it to be, in winter it is 5 times colder than you want it to be and in spring and fall, the storms are 5 times stronger than you want them to be.  But I never bargained for spring to be 10 times colder than you want it to be.  I don't like this.  I was hoping for pool weather by mid April.  At this rate, I'll be lucky to be able to walk outside by mid April.

Yesterday we got some storms and it was interesting.  I slept through most of it.  Or I should say I laid in bed and thought about what a slug I was and also thought about getting up through most of it.  It was pretty nice actually.  I can enjoy a good storm when I don't fear that the roof is about to fly off or that I'll wake up in Oz.   And because of that, I usually really like this time of year.

One of the nice things about spring in North Texas is the blooming of the Bradford Pear trees.  I love them.  I like driving down the road and seeing all of the trees along the sides of the road so covered in white that it looks like it snowed.  This morning it looks a little like it snowed on my patio and there isn't a Bradford Pear tree withing 200 yards of my patio.  Apparently with the strong winds last night, blooms flew in and are now covering my patio.  Once my patio rug dries which is going to take a few days, maybe I can get out there and sweep it all out.  But until then, I guess I'll just keep doing double takes everytime I pass by the window.

On the news yesterday they were showing hail in Ellis and Kaufman county that looked like snow.  Ugh!  Glad I don't live there!  I'll bet the roofing companies are going to be doing big business down there in the coming weeks.  Watching a weather report in North Texas during the spring and fall is always a lesson on where your insurance agent probably wouldn't want you to live if he or she got a vote.  I've lived in 11 different counties in Texas in the last 49 years and I can tell you that there are certain counties in Texas that I just couldn't live in no matter what.  You know what they are.... say them with me....

• Parker
• Wise
• Palo Pinto
• Kaufman
• Ellis

If there is bad weather anywhere in the state, these counties are going to get hit by it.  It's like they're cursed. Pete Delkus probably says these county names more than he says the names of his wife and children.  Pete's like, "It sprinkled in Dallas today and over in Wise county an F3 tornado touched down and there was widespread flooding in Kaufman county".  What happened?  Did Mr. Wise and Mr. Kaufman (I assume those counties were named after someone, probably some guys named Wise and Kaufman, right?) do something at some point that really made God angry and this is just payback?  This is like a Poltergeist type curse....  Maybe these counties exist over old Indian burial grounds.  If you live in any of these counties, don't turn your TV on during a storm.  You could get sucked in!

What was really amazing yesterday as I watched the news was that the reporter was standing next to what looked like about a 3 foot tall snow bank of hail and she actually said these words, "...but thank goodness there is no real damage here, back to you...."  Just because a tornado didn't touch down does not mean there is no damage.  If hail is forming drifts against your house, chances are your roof did sustain slight damage at least.  But I suppose she already climbed up on each of those roofs in her skirt and determined that "there was no real damage".  What an idiot.

In other news they had another dust storm in Lubbock yesterday.  Don't even get me started on why anybody would think that was a good place to live.

Okay, well that's my rant about the weather.  Have a good Sunday and stay warm.  It's feeling very much like a read a book in front of the fireplace Sunday.