hot

It’s HOT!

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I just saw my weather station register 106 degrees. We have clouds, and my weather alerts, that’s from area weather stations not my home weather station, has sent warnings about lightning strikes. So yes, we have hit hot here in the area.

The weather station is bouncing around the 104-106 mark.So we have hot, and I doubt we’ll get much cooler for a while.

UPDATE: it’s almost 4pm and it has begun sprinkling!

Okay, it rained for all of about 20 minutes. But that rain came in a variety of directions. The nice thing is the temperature dropped down to 74. In addition it was just rain (0.39 inches), some lightning and thunder, no hail. But now it is warming back up, we’re back up to mid 90’s in about an hour and a half.

Triple digits

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We have officially hit triple digit temperatures in my back yard. Its hot and dry, 101 and 33% humidity. Plants are just dying. Lawns are getting dry patches from not getting enough water. Potted plants are not happy, animals are not happy.

Trying to walk a dog in this weather is difficult. Even at 9pm its hot, often 89 degrees. And that’s just too hot to walk my dog. And of course, at 9pm its dark. You have to take a flashlight with you.

But we will see what happens thru the rest of summer. Will it get hotter? Very possibly it will. And if it does, it will be miserable.

RAIN!

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They’ve been saying we had rain coming in. And today was not the best of weather. It was overcast, humid, hot, not very comfortable. Even my dog didn’t want to walk.

But low and behold, at around 10:30pm it began to rain. We dropped from a high of 95 earlier today, down to a current 63 and began to rain, lightning, thunder, and hail over here.

As of right now we have 0.64 inches of rain. Looking at the radar I don’t think we’ll get much more tonight, but maybe just a little bit. But tomorrow our high should be just under 80, someplace in the high 70’s. And Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we are expected to get more thunderstorms.

Hopefully we do. We need the rain.

And the heat goes on

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Well, I’m not sure if its good news or bad news. We will not hit the triple digits. That’s sort of good. But we will not be dipping out of the 90’s over the next 10 days. The nights are not what I would call terribly cool, but they do dip down just below 70 or stay in the low 70’s. At least one nice thing is no rain to speak of over here. But that’s not the say it can’t get humid. My dear wonderful dog has not been sleeping thru the night well, so I’m often up early (think 3am) to let him out. It is actually still pretty warm, high 70’s, but humid at that time of the night.

My plants are not happy. My lettuce is bolted as is any arugula left. And my peas are not happy.

In defiance of this heat, I have added a bit more watering heads to the drip water system. We’ll see if it helps the plants. But it looks like it will be a long hot summer, or spring, whichever this is.

Clouds 05/14/22

I will say we did have these interesting clouds yesterday. We don’t see these often.

This is spring!

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So you think it’s spring time in central Texas. It balmy, wait this isn’t exactly balmy weather. It early May and we’re due to hit 89 degrees, with 66% humidity. And we could even get a shower or possibly a thunderstorm. This is spring time in central Texas. I wouldn’t call it balmy. It warm, more like hot, and humid already.

But just wait. This weekend it will be sunny, after showers later this week, with lovely highs in the high 90’s. And I’m talking 97-98 degree heat. I cannot make this weather up. It might be a sunny weekend and that hot, but after that it stays in the 90’s but its going to be cloudy. Let’s call it what it is, hot and humid – and we’re not in summer!

And you wonder why gardening is such an adventure here. Poor plants.

More rain

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Last nights rain continued. How much rain did we actually get, well that’s a good question. It appears my weather station at some point got reset and the time was off. So when I went to bed last night at midnight by my watch, it didn’t match the time on the weather station. So even though it said 0.79 inches what it continued to add until midnight its time, when it would have reset for the new day is anybody’s guess.

And to add to it last night was a night of lightning, thunder, rain, and power outages. We actually had 2 power outages that I know of.

Nonetheless today, now at 9:45pm we have 3.08 inches of rain on the weather station. We didn’t have any more power outages during the day. But we did have a couple more thunderstorms. Both last night, and this evening we have had downpours. The kind where the wind blows, the sky darkens, and the rain pours down.

Today we got to all of 77 degrees. I know because that was around 2:45 when I walked the dogs. But by 5pm it wasn’t much warmer. And then shortly after 5:30ish it began to pour. I was at the friends for dinner and we could watch it darken then watch rain begin to pour from the skies. It didn’t last too long, but it probably gave us a good 1/2 or more inches of rain.

Now at almost 10pm we have the before mentioned 3.08 inches of rain, and 72 degrees. For summer in Austin that is a bit below the norm. Yet tomorrow we should get up to the low 90’s (92 is the forecast) and our chances of rain drop down to 20%. The chance of rain drops after that, the sun will begin coming out and by Sunday we should be high 90’s (forecast for Sunday is 98).

As for the garden, I’m still harvesting Anaheim chilies. And it looks like there are some green beans ready to be harvested. But I’m not sure how the tomato plants are taking the downpours. I’m expecting the answer is going to be not great. I know some plants in pots are getting blown over due to the wind.

Crazy weather.

Rain

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Its been warm, in the 90’s. And yet today its been cooler, in the 80’s, and raining. We’ve had the kind of rain that if a sudden downpour. It gives like half an inch of rain in 20 minutes. Its nice, in part because it has cooled down to 77 as of now, 7pm. In addition to the half inch of rain at one short time period, we’ve had a couple of short sporadic rain falls, bringing us to a total so far today of 0.61 inches. Its only 7pm, so its possible we could get more rain tonight.

We do have a much larger chance of rain tomorrow. We actually have a chance of showers for the next week. We’ll see how much we actually get. It might be quite a bit, but who knows.

On a different note, the Pacific North West is in a heat wave. Hard as it is to believe today was supposed to be around 90. Tomorrow, Monday its expected to be 110 degrees in Seattle. And its supposed to be 90 on Tuesday.

This is a bit unusual. I’ve lived in that area and usually the hottest week is about the first week of August., usually Seafair weekend. This weekend is the last weekend of June. If this is their new hottest week, its a month ahead of schedule. Then again, the first week of August could still end up being hot, hotter than this. That just remains to be seen.

As for my garden, its doing okay. I finally pulled out my Swiss chard. Its grown far too large to handle. Its bitter, its a cool weather plant so I’m not sure why its been growing in the middle of 90 degree weather. So, I pulled it out. Ironically my peppers in pots are doing better than my pepper in the raised beds. I’ve lost my squash, yet my cucumbers are growing well. And my volunteer plants, seeds probably from last year, I think they are watermelon, maybe cantaloupe look like they are growing well. These plants have small fruits on them. We’ll see how they grow, and if they mature. My apple trees, in the ground actually look like they are doing well. They’ve grown taller, I’ve even seen flowers on them, and they are leafing out well. Even my new Meyer lemon is looking good.

Overall, the garden is doing okay.

UPDATE: per weather.com Seattle is 100 degrees at 6:20pm. That’s hot anywhere you are at.

First 90

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Yes, Texas, at least central Texas has finally had its first 90 degree day. We had it just the other day. Even the news mentioned it’s about 10-14 days early from our normal first 90 degree day. Earlier and earlier. Anyone who doesn’t believe weather is changing, yes even those that think this is normal, may want to actually look at what is happening, not what we think if happening.

I say this because we have to actually look at the weather that is outside our door as opposed to what history says should be happening. Since its not yet the middle of April, and we’ve hit 90 degrees already, no matter what the planning guides say, we need to start being aware of heat.

Last year we had 40+ triple digit days, days where we hit or passed 100 degrees. That may not seem that bad, but remember that here in Texas, especially this area, the days are hot, but so are our nights. So where we may have 100 degree days, the nights may only get down to 80 degrees or there about. So 100 degree day is not usually followed by a cool night of say 60-70. And with that kind of heat we also frequently get very humid. We may not get rain, but we get humidity.

This combination means mold, of a variety of types, which can be problems for plants.

If we have already begun 90 degree days, we need to consider not only the heat, but any humidity we get. Some of the weather station even show with the temperature expected a “muggy meter”. It may sound cute, but it is something we need to consider here in this area.

For our upcoming week, we will have something of a cooling of the weather. Starting Tuesday (today is Sunday) we will drop about 10 degrees to the mid to upper 70’s and begin getting a chance of run. The current forecast says we could expect upwards of 3/4 to 1.25 inches of rain. We could use the rain.

Beginning soon I may begin a gardening journal on this website. Where this year has already been interesting weather, it was just a couple of months ago that we had snow, and now we have 90 degree weather, I had begun noticing “surprise” plants in my garden. I call them surprise plants since I had not yet planted anything in those areas. I would have thought that the snow would have killed off some of the seeds left over from last year. But since I now have seeds coming up, I can only guess that they are left over seeds from last year.