Soggy July 4th

Well yesterday, July 3 we got rain. Not a lot but about 0.88 inches last I saw. But today, we have had rain almost all day. As of right now (6:30pm) we have 1.71 here in the back yard. That’s not bad really. Some areas, especially Mason and Kerrville have seen 10-18″ of rain. Some are calling it historic rain.

The rain came in and just sat over the area. There is flooding along some of the rivers. People are missing from some of the camps, and RV parks in the area. The Guadalupe River rose from nothing at midnight to 29 feet by 4am according to news.

There is/was a girls camp in the Kerrville area that was hit by the water. There are both dead and missing from the storm. Right now it’s 13 dead and 20 missing. I’m sure those numbers will change.

Yet, it is also warm to hot. We’ve been in the 90’s. Today, even with rain its still been 77-79, with a high of 81 here in Georgetown. It’s not a great weekend. Consequently, with all this rain, Independence Day events have been canceled. It’s just a decision that had to be made. And with the rain we’ve had, it’s probably for the best.

This coming week we will be in the high 90’s, and by the end of the week we are looking at triple digits. It’s left us hot, humid, clammy, muggy, sticky, and hard to breathe.

Will August be triple digits?

Weather

Strange weather. The other day we weren’t expecting rain. As that matter goes, it was 90 degrees and raining. It was only after the rain began that the temperature began to drop. It did drop, all the way down to 78. It was a nice cool down while it lasted. Unfortunately it didn’t last long. Within about 90 minutes the temperature began going back up. Such has been the weather here in central Texas.

As that matter goes the weather has been warm/hot, in the low to mid 90’s. I’m not sure we’ve actually hit a true 100 or more yet. They have predicted we will, but I’m not sure I’ve heard that it’s happened. But we’ve also had some thunderstorms, or better described as pop up showers. Those are the kind of showers that just come, stay less than 30 minutes, drop their rain and leave. But it also means we’ve had cloudy humid weather.

I don’t know if this is the way summer will be or not. It’s warm, not triple digits, but humid with the occasional rain burst. July begins tomorrow and we will see what it brings.

Weather

They’ve been talking about hot, which we got, and rain, which we also got. This past weekend was hot. 90+ degree heat. Some humidity was in store for us also.

Monday we woke up to 0.77″ of rain. Today, we got sporadic rain, more like 0.04 rain. But even now at 8:30pm we are expecting more rain. It was forecast we would have rain, and we should have tonight, Wednesday, and Thursday. But I’m not sure how much rain we will get. At this point I won’t know, oh well.

But it looks like we are getting rain.

Rain

Remember that song, Rainy days and Monday’s always get me down? Well this morning it was both – Monday and rainy. Early this morning it was a wake up call to pouring rain. In about an hour we have 0.34 inches of rain. I know that’s not a lot, but…..

It was a nice cool mid 60’s degree morning. I even walked my dog. It was a bit overcast, but after the rain that was okay. The rest of the day it was clear skies, cloudy, humid, clear, cloudy, and humid all day.

Until early evening. By about 6pm, the weather people had been on the air for about 2 hours. Straight. Parts of the area were under severe storm, tornado watch, hail, wind warnings. It was nasty. And it got worse.

Walking my dog in the evening, 7pmish it was cloudy in part of the sky, and clear in the other. But it looked ominous. Sure enough, weather alarms went off. They had said during the 2 hour weather episode that the storm was heading southwest. I think it took something of a detour. By the time it hit us it dropped just over an inch in about 45 minutes. By 10PM we have a nice 1.37 inches of rain. It’s now 11 and I’m going to bed and hoping for the best for the rest of the night.

Tomorrow we will see if there were any confirmed tornadoes. Maybe, maybe not. There was confirmed windshields broken from hail (some was softball and bigger sized). Flood warnings are in effect. Some areas got 2-4 inches in isolated areas. So where is the flooding? I’ll probably check in the morning.

But now at 11pm the weather alarms have stopped. Good luck and good night to all. Hopefully it will just be a bad storm and no tornadoes some the morning.

Surprise!

I haven’t been checking my plants much lately. Much to my surprise not only is the swiss chard growing, the basil is doing fine, and the beans are coming up, but the old seed (2020 seed) is coming up. I now have 5 tomato plants coming up. I even have some “some sort of long bean” seeds a friend gave me coming up. The only thing not sprouting yet is the bell pepper. Now I have two bell pepper sets of seeds. One set is from an old seed packet, the other was taken from a fresh bell pepper, left to dry a day then put into soil. So we have hope.

The seeds are planted in a variety of pots and a new vertical planter. The vertical planter looks like a planter box on a rack, just 4 planter boxes. It’s my first time using one. I’m trying it because of the change of the yard (new house) and I’m going to figure out what area may be best for gardening.

As for the weather, we got a small amount of rain again last night. I could hear thunder last night, and this morning the small porch was wet. Watering day here (we get one day a week assigned by the last digit of your address) is on Saturday. So I know it wasn’t the watering system. But the rain gauge says we only got 0.06″ of rain last night. Yes, we finally got the weather station up. It’s really nice to have it up.

Yuck

Before you consider moving to central Texas just letting you know. Yesterday was hot, mid 90’s then last night, around 9pm the temperature dropped to around 83 (I checked) and began to rain. We got 3/4″ of rain in about an hour. It was thunder, lightning, and rain. It was lovely in some ways. The fireflies were out. But it was hot and humid.

They had not originally forecast us to get rain. But as the day wore on they warned of pop up showers. Showers that would/could suddenly arise, might be short lived, not long lasting, and only cover smallish areas. The storm we got didn’t last long, maybe an hour. Then it moved on. But some areas got hail.

So before you think “Yeah, Texas has nice weather.” let me warn you. Summer has just begun, and it’s hot and humid, with occasional storms. At least the plants like it. That’s what I’m telling myself.

Welcome to summer

It may not yet be officially summer, but we hit high 90’s today. I’m not sure if we hit the forecasted 102, but tomorrow is scheduled for 104.

The calendar may not say its summer, but if this is spring weather what will summer bring? Well, considering the way summers have been here, I expect it will be a hot one.

Since we’ve moved and are pretty much in the new place, I’ve started some plants. This time its just via seed in pots aka direct sow. It’s not much. I did manage to bring my pots of grapes (2), rosemary, thyme, and mint. So I started basil, yard long beans, swiss chard, bell pepper, and tomatoes (baby boomer hybrid – cherry tomato). Surprisingly the basil, beans, and chard have all begun to sprout. I’m still waiting on the tomato and bell pepper to come up. Since they were not all new seeds, we’ll see what sprouts. Only the Basil and beans are new seed. I was going to used old basil seed but I found my package was empty. So I bought new seed.

This time I’m trying what is called a vertical planter. It’s a plastic, 4 level, smallish planter. Its a new planter for me. But I figured since its a new house, I don’t know the sun patterns well enough yet. I have fencing on three side, privacy wood fence, so I will get shade in some areas. There is also a tree planted by the builder. I did manage to pick up a lemon, improved Meyer at Home Depot today. Interesting info – there seems to be something called ACP and HLB that some citrus trees are getting infested with. Consequently you can’t import lemon trees to Texas. So buying a lemon tree has gotten a bit more expensive, and they are being grown in Texas for sale in Texas.

We’ll see what I can do with a garden this year. Hopefully I can keep them alive.

We got rain

This week, starting with Monday May 5 we got rain. Monday we actually got an inch of rain. I can’t give as definitive of an amount as I normally do. I’ve recently moved and I don’t have my weather station set up yet. I do have an old fashioned rain gauge set up so I still have an idea of how much rain we are getting. It wasn’t the worse rain day, but nonetheless we got rain.

Then yesterday, Tuesday we got more rain. Yesterday we got all the rain in the morning, by 1pm, just after noon the skies were clear and blue. But the morning dropped 1-1/2 inches of rain. Both days also gave us tornado sightings in Central Texas. I can’t say I’ve heard that they did a lot of damage, but they were confirmed sightings.

Both days were also filled with severe weather warnings, mainly rain, hail, and wind. And then of course tornado warnings.

The rest of the week we are expected to be dry. That will be nice after all the rain we got. It will give time for any floods to recede.

It’s cold

Yup its cold today. And I mean its a week into April and we have a frost warning tonight. It’s been cold and windy today. This morning it was 43 when I got up, we got to a high of 52. Now, the sun is getting ready to set and the temperature outside is dropping. And as I said, we are under frost and freeze warning tonight. It should be in the mid 70’s, like 76 not 52.

Crazy weather. We’ll see what the rest of the week gives us. If the forecast is to be believed a week from today should be 90. Yup, this is Texas weather.

Weird weather

Okay, this has been weird weather. The other day we had hot almost record breaking heat. For this time of the year we matched the record of 89 degrees. Today we got up to 69, then promptly dropped down to 62 and got rain. Early on today it was light, more like drizzle. Later it became rain. Here at the house we got to a nice 1.20 inches of rain by 9pm. And more is due for tomorrow. We had to go out to Cedar Park, and I was lucky I happened to grab a polar fleece since they said rain. I also grabbed a light rain jacket. They had said possible rain, but that possible is now scheduled to continue until mid day tomorrow.

Welcome to weird weather Texas.