Month: February 2024

Yup, it it still cold. At 4:30 pm it was 43 degrees outside and a bit on the wet side too. It is not a pouring down rain. It is more like a drizzly, damp, just wet enough to get the roads slick kind of rain. But to put it in perspective, the rain in my back yard only measures 0.01 inches of rain. That is almost no rain, almost.

But tomorrow… tomorrow we should be in the 70’s, and the day after in the 80’s.

Welcome to Texas spring time weather.

To add to the fun, the Panhandle area of Texas is in wildfires. Yet part of the area had snow. One of Reagan’s relatives said they had 2″ of snow. Yet outside Amarillo over 1 million acres have burned. It’s called the Smokehouse fire. It ranges from north of Amarillo in a place called Fritch, east thru an area called Canadian all the way to the Oklahoma border, and slightly into OK. And the fire started yesterday. The panhandle area has had to deal with dry air and wind. The fire is more scrub grass wildfire. Its not an area with a lot of trees, but anything in the path is burning. Houses have gone up in smoke, ranch land has burned. Even some cattle have died due to the fire.

As of today, this evening, they say only 3% of the fire is contained. Basically, its not contained at all. Hopefully conditions will change and they’ll be able to contain it.

It is also now the largest wildfire in Texas history.

The cold front came in. It’s now 4:30 and we’ve only made it to 51 here at the house. That’s a bit cold considering what we were at yesterday. And the breeze, okay sometimes it has been a wind, makes it feel even colder. Tomorrow is supposed to be cold again, with even a possibility of rain. And yet in two days we should be back to 80 degrees. Yes this is central Texas spring time weather. It just doesn’t know what it wants to do. We just have to keep both winter clothes and summer clothes available.

Tonight is supposed to be colder, hitting about 40 degrees. Yet tomorrow night should be even colder, mid 30’s. What is crazy is it appears there are small patches of Texas sitting around freezing, and possibly getting precipitation. I’m not going to say they are getting snow or ice, because I don’t know that. But it is rather strange weather.

Note: I had to walk my dog. With the breeze and the cold I walked him in a down jacket. It is cold out there.

Here at the house we did not hit 90. We only made it to 86, but that’ pretty warm for February. Wednesday is still forecast for mid 50’s.

Where I didn’t get to 90, apparently some areas west of where I am got into the 90’s. I heard on the news that parts of Killeen, not that far away got to 93. Actually Killeen had an interesting weather pattern. Part of it only got to about 86, and part of it got to 93 (maybe higher, I’m not sure). The news said somewhere got to 97 in its viewing area.

Now, what should we be at? We should only be around 65 this time of year. That’s a bit of a difference from where we got to. We’ll see how tomorrow’s weather goes.

Yup, it is warm today. We are talking in the high 70’s, and possibly even low 80’s. Online weather says it is 84, I’m not sure where that is being measured. Its just after noon and here at my place the weather station says it is 82. Okay, yup it is warm. And this is Texas February weather. Temperatures are once again all over the place.

Last weekend I had a fire in the fireplace. But now, well here we are – warm and sunny. Do remember to wear sunscreen. Next week they think we’ll have a cold front that will take us back into the 60’s for high temperatures. We’ll see what happens. We haven’t really had much rain. It would be nice if we get some.

I have been looking at making some minor changes to outside. I don’t know that I will start a garden, but I have added some pots with caladiums, put in flower seeds, and turned my yard rain water back on. Actually Reagan had to come help me with turning the water back on. I didn’t know how to. I looked online how to turn it on, but didn’t quite understand which things to turn on. Part of the problem was that the online systems looked different than what I have, and seemed to expect you to know what they were talking about. I don’t think I will have the lines blown out again.

Elsewhere areas have their own problems. Unfortunately California has still been having rain issues. It looks like they have a clear day today, but they have had flooding. Weather is changing from what it once was.

Today is the first of February and what a change in weather. We’ve changed from the cold we had the other week to beautiful nice warm more mid to late spring type of weather. By that I mean its been beautiful outside. We’ve been mid 60’s to low 70’s. I think one day even hit 76 at the high. This morning by 11AM it was already 64 outside. So when I say its been nice I need it. The weather has been great.

But will it last? Is winter over for us? That I don’t know. The last freeze date for here is mid March, like March 22. So we could still be in for another 6 weeks with cold hitting at some odd ball time. Then again, the cold could be done for. Who knows?

But it is nice. I was able to get a company in to raise the canopy of my oaks in front, and have them clean them up. The oaks had taken some damage at one time. There was a place where a branch had obviously been torn off in some weather incident. So I was glad to have someone come in and take out branches that didn’t need to be there. Some were crossing branches that were growing together, some were just extra branches, think side heavy. So I needed someone that could handle that for me. I also had them treat the trees for their health. But the trees look much better.

But next year I will probably need to have them work on the trees again. Even the company said I need to let the oaks recuperate from the work they just had. So be it.

With the nice weather I have begun doing a little work on the yard. I’ve reseeded dirt patches, looked at putting in some pavers in front, bought a couple of pots and plants for them. I’m even thinking about starting some grow bags in the back yard.

One issue I have to learn about is how to turn my water back on. A couple of month ago a company came and turned off and blew out the sprinkler system. I’ve never had that done before. I guess all I have to do is literally turn the water back on and turn the watering system on and everything should work. I just hope that’s true. We’ll find out. New things I get to learn.

And of course we’ll see what the weather does and when I should turn the watering system back on.