Texas Weather

"If you don't like the weather in (insert location here), just wait, it'll change!"

This holds true for Texas, for sure!

While thunder and lightening are a pretty regular occurrence, last night's storm was a cut above. 3am found all 4 of us crammed in our bed, with a laptop showing the latest radar pictures. That big, ugly, dark spot was right over our heads and boy! was that thunder loud!

Bridget was shaking under the covers, Reba was going insane out in her crate. Reba hates storms. She goes completely psycho, poor thing.

Then, the hail started. 'Bout the size of ping-pong balls. Car-damaging size, unfortunately. Noisy, too.

Next, came the sirens. I need to correct the kids thinking.... they believe these are tornado sirens. They are, simply, severe weather sirens and usually start up just after the storm cell has passed beyond us. Thanks for the warning.

I don't think I told y'all (love that word!) about our blizzard a few weeks back? Two of 'em, actually. The first was on a Monday night and getting Aidan home from swim practice was quite a trial. The last 7-8 miles to our house is a one-lane road with ditches on either side and no streetlights. It was VERY dark, with my car lights ONLY illuminating the snowflakes. The center line and sides of the road were completely obscured. Made it home safe and sound and the kids stayed up late out back building a snow man and making snow angel.

(would insert cute late-night snow photo here if the camera hadn't been (ahem) dropped that night and is now in the repair shop)

The next storm was just a few days later and it was a true blizzard. At least 6 inches of snow in just a few hours. On a community that is completely unprepared, that is crippling.

The kids had quite an adventure. That 7-8 mile stretch of one-lane road? So many cars were wrecked in all manner (into each other, into the ditch, etc.) that the school bus couldn't get to our neighborhood. The driver pulled over and had all the kids share the 4-5 cell phones that were on the bus and call any available adult to come retrieve them. Kids wound up going with the first known adult who showed up, but couldn't get back home so wound up at houses all over the place. Ray got smart and headed towards the lake where he knew of a road that got real close to a trail that backs up to our neighborhood. Abandoned the car back there and hiked the kids the rest of the way home through the woods.

A few days later, it was sunny and 80 degrees.

Texas weather sure keeps life interesting!