Yes, it’s been a while

The past few months have been busy for me. Not all of it good, but busy nonetheless. Enough of me, on to the weather.

Hot. How else can I describe it. Just hot. It’s now early October and we are still sitting at 95 degree days. I admit I missed the entire month of August. I just skipped town and went on a cruise. I just didn’t want to deal with Texas heat. I’m glad I skipped town, but suffice it to say it is still hot here in central Texas.

Rumor has it we will cool down next week, but I’ll wait and see before I believe them. Trust but verify!!

Overall the weather here in the USA has been scary. The east coast has dealt with two hurricanes. One, Helene that hit the Florida coast as a Cat 4 late September. It then worked its way up to the Carolina’s wrecking havoc with rain and winds. It left power outages, flooding, property damage, etc. in its wake.

Then just the other day Hurricane Milton arrived. It didn’t go up the coast, it just crossed Florida. It entered as a Cat 3 and crossed the state. Florida has been left with power outages, severe damages, etc. I say etc. because in the couple of weeks between Helene and Milton, Florida didn’t have a chance to recover. It was in the process of recovering when Milton set it’s eyes on Florida. My guess is Milton compounded damages from Helene. I hate to say it, but it will probably take a while for Florida to recover from both storms.

Devastation abounds. Mother Nature has taken her fury out on the area. But we don’t know if she’s done, just getting warmed up, or what. Will another hurricane arrive? Nobody knows — yet.

The heat grows

Temperatures are up to the mid 90’s. It looks like summer is settling in. Starting this weekend we may begin hitting triple digits. After all the rain we had things are still growing pretty well. Things in pots are what actually have to be watered. I have a few pots out front, and they do need watering occasionally.

The tornado was just over a month ago, it happened May 22, and I have finally gotten my roof replaced and just the other day I got my fence replaced. It’s a lovely fence. It’s treated wood, someone said it is cedar. I know it looks good. The posts are metal and facing inside toward the house. I know most people have been wondering about why I had it put in that way. Well, the other week the city (I think) sent out vehicles and men to cut down trees in the back area. There is a railroad track back there, pretty close back there. My understanding is that the railroad track will eventually be turned into a walk trail. From what I understand it used to be the Georgetown Railroad. Now it’s just an abandoned track. But because the track is behind where I live, and I understand it will become a walk track, I don’t want the posts and rails facing the track. It would make it easier for any passing kids to jump the fence into my yard. Something I’m not keen to have happen.

Nonetheless, I’m glad to have my roof fixed and my new fence installed. Many of the houses in the area still have plastic and tarps on their roofs. I know I’ve seen a lot of roofs being worked on, so they are getting fixed. But there are a lot of them still in need of work.

I’m sure these people would be happy to get there homes fixed. Hopefully it will happen soon.

Lots of news

It’s been a while since I’ve posted and a lot has happened. We had a variety of small storms.

I had contacted my insurance about my roof from the hail storm we had May 12. They came out May 21. The result included fence damage, garage door damage, and roof damage. There was enough damage to now require a new roof.

Then May 22 came. That day will be remembered by many for a long time. I wrote a post I couldn’t post at the time. I include it below.

Thursday May 23

I’m writing this having made it thru the night.

Yesterday we had a storm blow thru Temple. I’m sure surrounding areas, including Belton got hit also.

It was mid/late afternoon and I had turned news on, maybe 5pm. At that point a storm with hail, news said 2-3” hail had been coming our way. I kept the news on. They seemed to think the storm would go north and maybe just hit north Bell county. I kept watching.

A friend called me but at that point sirens were going. I hung up with him. Those were tornado sirens. I couldn’t see anything but we were in warnings. News at that point said Morgans Point area could get hit with the storm.

A friend and I were texting each other. Her area got hit with the storm before I did, and that area got damage. But shortly after texting with her, and I mean minutes later, wind started up here. We even got more hail. And then rain.

And then the storm hit. Linus (my dog) and I hunkered down in the bedroom closet. Linus was scared, poor baby.

By the time it was over, and it didn’t take long, Temple had damage. A funnel was spotted in the north side of Temple. Roofs got torn off (I understand some got taken all the way off), windows got blown in. I hear a house collapsed and a mobile home was taken off its foundation.

By 7:30pm Linus and I went outside for a walk. Part of my back fence is down so I can’t let him out there. People in the area lost shingles, a lot of shingles, fences came down, backyard coops got thrown over fences, and I’m sure there was damage I didn’t see.

People have water in their houses due to the roof damages, and some have damage from fencing coming thru their windows. It is a bit of a mess! One neighbor said her second floor bathroom is flooded because of roof damage. I spoke with some one else, they were driving around looking for items they had lost, and they had a part of their fence blow thru their dining room/living room windows. They said they had water and glass everywhere.

But it appears we got off light. North Temple got hit as did downtown. Pignetti’s, an Italian restaurant downtown lost their roof, it caved in. I understand some houses had significant damage.

As of today, the day after the storm, some areas are still without power. I have power, just no internet. I have no tv so I don’t know if another storm is due this afternoon, though I’ve been told we have two coming. One is due around 3ish, and another later around 8pmish.

Right now as I write this, almost 1pm it is eerily still outside. Not a breath of wind.

All you hear outside are occasional emergency vehicle sirens and the sound of hammering. Roofing companies are outside putting tarps up on roofs in the area. Some started that last night.

The good news here is in this neighborhood, people may have house damage but nobody was hurt. I don’t think that’s true all around the area, but over here in this small little circle it seems to be true.

And for the record yesterday’s storm gave us 1.77 inches of rain. But this morning we got another 1.14 by 10AM.

My neighbor also has Spectrum internet, and they don’t have internet right now either. Hopefully it will come back up soon.

UPDATE: The upshot of that storm was Temple got hit by 2 tornadoes. The damage in some area is significant. Buildings have experienced total damage, some major damage. Some places have already said it will be 6 months or longer to rebuild, some may not rebuild. Houses have been turn up. Trees have been down, some with power lines over, or by them. One friend of a friend had significant outside damage. They had trees downed, an outside roof (pergola I think) demolished. Power lines we torn down. At this house a power line went down over an area of bushes, when the power was turned on the bushes burst into flames.

Many areas saw trees torn down, broken, twisted apart. Some were uprooted while others just lost branches, albeit enough branches to need to be cut down. One neighbor mentioned that a friend had a “new tree” in their back yard. A tree had been uprooted and moved due to the storm.

One hotel in Temple even had their front portico (the covered area in front of the main door, where cars drive) collapse. There has been enough damage FEMA assistance is now available within the Temple area. The lakes are now so full water needs to be released before the July 4th holiday.

Luckily we have not had a repeat of any of these storms since then.

Another day, another storm

The much hyped storm made it here today. It was strong wind (I’m pretty sure I heard a tree branch cracking), rain (by 10pm it was 3 inches), some hail (smaller, pea sized), and of course lightning and thunder. The good news is it looks like tomorrow will not be some of the same. Tomorrow might be some rain early, but then clearing. I’m hoping for the clearing part.

Just a little side note. Due to the hail last Sunday, we have had many salesmen from roofing companies come around. There are over half a dozen signs in peoples yards advertising who will be doing their roof work. I’m in that list. The hail Sunday didn’t puncture holes in the shingles, but it did damage. My roof is one year old, but it is now damaged by hail.

Oh yea.

More Rain

Yesterday was an interesting weather day. The morning started with storms. Lightning and thunder. It was a fast moving lightning and thunder system, but it was severe. Some of the strikes were extremely close to this house. I wish I could tell you how close, but I can’t.

But after that portion of the storm we got rain and hail. This gives you an idea of the size hail we got.

This hail dented cars. Thank heavens it didn’t last long.

And when it was all done, we received 1.5 inches of rain.

Today, we woke again to dark cloudy skies, but the rain has been minimal here at the house. But more rain is due later this week. We shall see what happens.

Dry, but humid

We’ve been lucky these past few days. We’ve been dry. Some clear skies, some cloudy skies. But no rain. The nice thing is it’s given us time to dry out. I’ve driven by areas where road machinery is being used to clean mud off roads. It also means some of the lawn are no longer have sitting water. My mowing service usually mow my yard on Mondays. But due to the rain we’ve had, they came today. What is nice is even though they use a large riding mower, the lawn has dried enough for it not to do damage. That’s nice.

But we are not likely to have this dry weather for long. Each night there are notices of “possible severe weather” in the evenings. So far here at my place we haven’t had any. But they are once again predicting rain, but it isn’t likely until late this weekend. But there is a chance of it on Thursday. We’ll see what we get.

I won’t be surprised if rain shows up on Thursday considering the humidity and heat we have. This morning it was 10AM, 81 degrees and 84 percent humidity. So even the days are warming, we’re shooting for 90 today. But we also have high humidity. So I can believe that we may get more rain. I’m not sure we are quite ready to dry out and get to hot summer weather. But with out temperatures, it’s clear summer is coming.

More rain

Another storm came through last night. It was late, about midnight when it came thru. Again thunder and lightning along with the rain. This morning my gauge said we got 1.68 inches of rain last night. This morning I awoke to crystal blue clear skies. Also by 1pm 74 degrees looking for 80 later today and high humidity. Since I’m dog sitting still, when I attempted to walk the dogs they started out great, then slowly gave out. I had to carry one of them home in the end.

One forecast says possible storms again overnight, but the day should be clear.

If I’m calculating correctly, so far this short couple of weeks we have had 7.17 inches of rain. That may not be perfectly accurate. I did have one night where we had power fluctuations and the weather station reset itself. But still, that’s quite a bit of rain.

And more on the way? Oh dear!

Update: final total rain for today 1.85 inches.

Thunder and lightning

Last night we had storms. I wish I could tell you how much rain we actually got but I don’t know. My poor weather station sometime between midnight and 3AM got reset. I’m betting it was from the storm. I know there was a problem when I came out and saw the weather station said it was 12:03AM at 3 in the morning. But from that time on it did register 0.80″ of rain. I’m pretty sure we got more than that. The storms hit at night, and it rattled the windows. The night sky was lit up with lightning. It was pretty constant for a while, probably over an hour. Eventually it moved on, but left flooding in its wake.

Such is life in central Texas when it rains. Or at least sometimes when it rains.

It is possible we might get another storm tonight. But we are expecting one this weekend. We’ll see what we get.

Rain

They predicted rain and we got it.

This weekend was not my best weekend. Saturday my dog got a grooming, but later than day began getting sick. By Sunday morning it was obvious he needed to see a vet, on a weekend, with emergency clinics the only open option. So my baby, my dog, was whisked off the the emergency vet. There he was diagnosed, and is still residing. He should be home tomorrow morning – that will be good.

But when he was taken, by a friend around 9 am, it was raining. Not too bad, but a definite rain. By the time I left the house, not quite an hour later, it was raining a bit harder. But by the time I left the vet, almost 1pm, it was a hard rain. There were alerts about flooding.

So how much rain did we get? We’ll my rain gauge said 3.44 inches. Which was interesting since it stopped raining early evening. But in the hours it rained, we got hard rain. And of course with the rain we got some cooler temperatures. That part was nice.

Today, Monday, it is cloudy, and shooting for the mid 80’s but at least no rain for today. But come tomorrow we may be back dealing with rain. Actually the rest of this week we may be dealing with rain. How much will we get? I have no clue. Will it be hard rain like yesterday? I don’t know that either. But I do know we need the rain, so I’m at least thankful for that.

Oh, and I didn’t post this yesterday, I did try. But it appears my hosting company was doing some maintenance when I was looking to post. Oh, well, at least I can tell you today what the weather was like.

Rain

Well, we got rain the other day, or night I should say. Saturday we began with rain a bit in the late afternoon. By 11pm we had 1.25 inches of rain. That’s all we got here at the house, but it was a good rain. It seemed to soak in.

Yes, my grass is growing. It could probably use a cut weekly. But a cut every other week works too.

Even my grape plants, in large pots, are growing. But I’m sure summer and triple digits are just around the corner. We’ll see when they arrive.