Uncategorized

Ice!

admincatsg Uncategorized , ,

We woke up here at my place to 28 degrees, just over 1 inch of precipitation from last night, and ice.

8:30 AM Feb 2, 2022

The bad news is it is not going to get any better today nor tomorrow. Schools are closed both today (Thursday) and tomorrow (Friday).

Out side is a mixture of ice on tree limbs, and sleet pellets on the ground. We’ve had little rain today, its all freezing rain and sleet.

Some areas around are flooded. I’ve been watching news and they said some areas got 3 inches of rain last night. So a few areas have water over the roads. Hopefully those won’t freeze and stay liquid. But its going for cold, and around freezing in the area all tody and tomorrow. They are calling for a low of 18. Some areas will get wind chills of 0, zero, or thereabouts.

Its not almost 10am as I write this and my weather stations says we are down to 26 degrees.

UPDATE: Its now 1pm, and we are down to 23 degrees

Cold is coming

admincatsg Uncategorized , , , ,

We started this morning with a nice mid 50’s. It was overcast but okay weather. That was this morning.

Now, 7pm we have dropped just below 40 and we expect it to continue dropping.

I stopped at the grocery story today after exercise. It was packed with people. I often go to the grocery store after exercise. It makes sense since one grocery store is about 3 doors down, the other grocery store is on the way home. Either way, it makes sense to go to the grocery store after exercise. What this means is I know how busy it usually would be today, at these grocery stores. Well, today was definitely different. If you didn’t get a basket out in the parking lot, they were hard to come by. Some items were out, clean shelves.

And there were a lot of people in the stores. Instead of maybe 2 people in line, there were 6-8. Carts were full, some with what I thought were strange items. One couple had a card loaded with large 2 liter soda bottle, and I mean loaded. They were stacked upright, then stacked upside down in between the upright bottles. And it was a full cart. Small cartons of milk were all gone. I was lucky enough to snag a medium size bottle, but I saw one guy trying to carry 4 large gallon size jugs of milk. Some canned goods were sold out too.

I’m sure now at this time of night, even thought the stores would normally be open, I’m sure they are pretty cleaned out and empty.

I’ve even heard schools are closed both Thursday and Friday. The new forecast says a low of 26 tonight. Tomorrow will be a high of 29 with a low of 17. Then Friday it will be a high of 36 with a low of 19. Since we have rain already, albeit light precipitation, it will probably turn into ice. They are expecting freezing rain tonight.

Earlier today, before I left for exercise I covered plants, turned off water, and covered the hose bibs. Since yesterday we got over an inch of rain, I’m not worried about the plants needing watering. Hopefully everything will make it through this cold. We’ll see.

Rain

admincatsg Uncategorized

My lovely Linus, my dog, needed a potty break early this morning. At like 4:40AM this morning. When I got up to take him out, I noticed the rain gauge said we had 0.11 inches of rain. It had just started to rain. By morning, when I got up, have had over an inch of rain. We even had a bit of thunder. Now, at 11pm we have acquired 1.39 inches of rain. Most of the day has just been overcast, with just occasional rain showers. Its been in the mid 50’s all day, and still is. Tomorrow should be similar, both in temperature and in possible rain. But by Wednesday, the day will be in the 60’s, but by that evening, maybe overnight we should drop to below freezing. Wednesday night we expect a hard freeze, 28 degrees. Thursday the day time temperature should be just above freezing, at 33. But that night is expected to be down to 19 degrees. Friday won’t be much better. The day time temperature will again be just above freezing, with the night below freezing. It will be a cold week ahead.

Additionally Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday we expect to have some rain too. So it could be we end up with ice, sleet, maybe snow (not in the forecast). I will keep you posted, but its going to be a cold wet week.

Cold start

admincatsg Uncategorized

My wonderful dog needed an early morning potty break, 6 AM early. At that time the temperature outside was 23 degrees. Now at just past 10:30 AM we have risen up to 43. We are shooting for a high of 54 today. The nice part is we should be above freezing temperatures for night for the next week. Also hopefully we will get some rain later in the week. That would be nice.

Cold night

admincatsg Uncategorized

Yesterday was cold, and today was warmer, but not by much. We did manage to get into the mid 40’s, but it was a cold time walking the dog today.

This evening, it’s now 10:45PM, and we have already dropped down to 27 degrees. The forecast is for 25 tonight. We may well get that or a bit lower. At this point anything is possible.

Once we make it through tonight’s cold we should warm up. Albeit not greatly, but enough to make the days in the 50’s and the nights above freezing. That should be an improvement to today’s and yesterday’s cold. Still not great for the plants, but it is winter so we have to expect it.

Its cold

admincatsg Uncategorized , ,

At 8:45 AM my weather station says its 31 degrees outside. The weather station says its 34 with a wind chill of 22. I believe it. We have only a small chance of any precipitation, and at this temperature it might end up freezing on contact. So we have our cold, and its expected to stick around all day, with these below freezing nights for the next couple of days. The apple trees should be happy.

One thing of interest, is Corpus Christi, on the coast, is in a winter warning. That is unusual. Since it is on the coast, the warm water tends to moderate the temperature, so it doesn’t usually get that cold in that area.

I’ll keep updating.

5:15PM UPDATE

I wanted to take my dog out at 4pm for a walk so I went out the back to check the weather. Well, at that time we were getting a fix mix of what I am guessing is sleet. It pings when it hits hard surfaces. It’s been light, no real accumulations, but its still coming down, and the temperature has recently dropped. It hasn’t dropped much, its now 29 degrees (5:15 pm). The highest we reached was 32, but we are still due to get colder, 27 tonight. And considering what we’ve seen today, I bet we do get colder. Oh, and the dog has not been tickled to go outside at all. Just reporting.

11:59PM UPDATE

We’ve have cold, now at almost midnight we are just climbing over 32, but its just below 33 degrees outside. We had what might be called some freezing rain, or maybe not. Cars outside have a sheet of ice on them, but it could just be the light (very light) precipitation and the cold temperatures. But it has been cold. There is just not other way to describe it. It has been cold all day long. And before morning we should get down to 27. The good news is tomorrow should be a balmy 47. We can hope.

Cold front

admincatsg Uncategorized , , ,

The forecast has been warning about a cold front for a number of days now. Well, today we hit a high of 81 here at the house. Less than an hour ago it was 79, now its 68. I’ve been watching the temperature since we moved plants to the center of the back patio but I wanted to cover them at 75. Well, I watched the temp and was able to cover them when I wanted to. I really wanted to co er them before it got too cold.

Tonight’s forecast is all of 29, and I bet we hit it. It might be early in the morning when we hit that, but it means we will be in for a cold night. And on top of that we expect wind, so it will be cold outside.Tomorrow, Thursday we expect a high of 39, and a low of 25. So it will be cold tomorrow no matter how you look at it. Friday is expected to get up to 49 with a low of 26.

Outside right now the clouds are coming in and the air is still, but the temperature keeps slowly dropping. I guess the only good news is here we have no forecast of precipitation. But the Austin area is under a winter weather advisory.

Basically it says we should expect precipitation of minor sleet/snow, possibly ice but probably not measurable. But they are also saying wind gusts to 35 mph. And we’re expecting it to begin around 3AM Thursday and go until 6AM Friday. But exactly where this will hit remains to be seen.

Indecisive weather

admincatsg Uncategorized , , , , ,

Well, yesterday (Saturday) we had wind. Lots of wind. Blow things down wind. And it was cold. Not freezing cold, but cold-in the 40’s cold. Walking my dog it was cold and windy. I know I get cold, but I even wore a down jacket to stay warm during the walk.

Today was actually kind of nice. It was much warmer, mid 60’s warmer. It wasn’t bad walking my dog. But now, at about 10 pm it is already down to 35 degrees. So even though we had a nice day, its time to cover plants for this evening.

The end of last week, on Friday we did some gardening work. We got both the new blueberries in, and got the Seedless Thompson grape planted too. We also dumped a few dead plants, think peppers I was tired of, and began figuring out what we want to do for next year. I’ve had to use some of the soil that we put into the raised beds to plant the new berries and grape. I still have some strawberries and a peony to plant sometime soon. The issue is this weather.

But to give an idea of what we are dealing with, Tuesday is supposed to be 74 and 54, yet Wednesday we will be 76 and 32. Then Thursday its 40 and 26, Friday is 42 and 24, and next Saturday its 36 and 28. So we have more cold coming in. Anything that I was thinking of direct sowing is out of the question. I can start seeds inside, its warm enough inside. But outside we are due for cold.

One issue I do have to be aware of is is last Friday to be exact, I had to call 911. Some how after having a fire in my fireplace for almost 4 hours my flue closed. The good news is that the fire alarms worked and began screaming. I opened the back and front door, grabbed Linus my dog, put my purse by the front door, put on a jacket, and walked out with my cell phone and called 911 – not quite in that order. I am happy to say fire and EMS showed up quickly. Cute firemen I do have to say. But now I’m a bit leery of using my fireplace. I will, but I’ve taken the damper pull off just in case that was part of the problem.

But with all the warm weather we have, we are due for more cold on the way.

Rain?

admincatsg Uncategorized , , , ,

I’m not sure I would actually call it rain. Its been more of a mist. Yesterday was cold and humid, think 38 degrees and 99% humidity. I know my weather station never showed the temperature get to 40 during the day.

It slowly warmed up over night. Now, at 7:45pm it’s 58 degrees and still 99% humidity. But it is not rain, nothing is really coming down. My weather station shows we’ve had measurable precipitation of 0.16 inches for the day. That’s why I say its more mist than actual rain coming down. Its left things wet, but nothing coming down from the sky, an umbrella would not have been helpful today.

Tomorrow, Sunday we should warm up to 61, and be 50’s to 60’s next week. Monday night, might get down to almost freezing, we’ll see.

I have lost a few annual. The petunias and the geraniums are pretty much frozen. But those plants I put up y the house are doing well – the lemongrass, lemon tree, etc.

Its freezing

admincatsg Uncategorized

Really, its 9:30 AM and its 32 outside. And we’ve had a fatality. We had covered the lemon, but the cover is off. All the leaves are shriveled and I think its dead. I”ll leave it uncovered, covering it won’t do much good now. Maybe if there’s any life it will come back, but I’m think the lemon is gone.