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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The past few days have been warm. The kind of weather where you wear light linen weight pants, sandals, and the dog starts panting because of the heat.

Today was jeans, socks, sneakers, sweatshirt, and a jacket on top to walk the dog. What a difference a day makes.

It is cold and windy outside. They forecast a possibility of rain later today, and we well may get it. It does look like there is rain and maybe thunderstorms north of us, like Fort Worth and Dallas areas. But outside now is dark, dreary, cold, damp, and windy. Even my dog wanted to come back in.

I know it’s been a while. A lot has happened. I won’t get into much of it.

But we have had some rain. Yesterday we even had an eclipse, a total solar eclipse. That was interesting. If you’ve never seen one, words can describe it but they can’t fully describe the experience. And you need to experience one to understand what it really is like.

One interesting part of yesterday’s eclipse was we did have some clouds. Not a lot, and they broke up enough to get the full experience of the eclipse. They had forecast rain, and we did get rain. The eclipse totality was around 1:37 pm and the rain began just a bit after sundown. As I write this its almost 9pm the next day. We got about 1/2″ of rain last night, but I didn’t stay up late enough lot the actual amount. This morning when I got up we had 0.34 inches of rain. As of now, almost 9pm we have over 3″ of rain and it is still raining.

We had rain, lightning, thunder, and I understand some areas got hail. And more of the same is on tap for more. We’ve been under severe thunderstorm warnings, for a while we were under tornado watch. They have had a lot of warnings about lightning. Here where I live we’ve had some close strikes. Normally my dog doesn’t care about thunder. But both last night and today we’ve had such thunder even my dog has taken notice.

Unfortunately we won’t be out of these storms until tomorrow sometime. The forecast says we’ll have them until late morning. We’ll see how long the storms last.

The good news is that we are getting rain, and quite a bit of rain. Like I said, we’re already at over 3 inches of rain, just today. I’m sure it will help all the lakes, and the aquifers. Texas does need all of those filled, both lakes and aquifers. Those are often our primary water sources.

UPDATE: It’s not quite 9:30 pm and we’ve now got 5.26″ of rain

Update: the last total last night that I saw was 5.41″ of rain.

Yes, we have a significant weather change. Today reached the low 70’s. It was sunny, and lovely outside. It made for nice walks. What a difference a day makes.

Now as for that fire that is still ongoing in Texas. Now they are saying it started on Monday. And it may have started by a downed power pole. Is that the actual cause, to be determined.

But the worry now is warm weather and wind are on their way for the weekend. How bad will it get? We don’t know. I will keep you posted.

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.