Weather Update

After face planting in the front yard a few days ago when the cane and I got tangled up, I made a point not to get beyond the dry porch late today when Scott took stuff out to the bins. It was incredibly cold.

Currently, as of 8 PM, we are at 19 at DFW Airport and they say we bottom out at 12. Even though the faucets are on interior walls, I have them open and dribbling so I can hear the money going right down the sinks. As Scott keeps pointing out, it beats a flood and a plumber.

We have power and are very glad about that. Everything is ice covered due to all the sleet. Guessing at this point, we have at least two inches of ice due to all the sleet. Could easily be more. Lot more sleet is inbound tonight.

No pics as I was focused on not falling on the porch. Maybe pics tomorrow.

Been A Rough Week

Between my health issues and car stuff it has been a hard and very expensive week. Which is why nothing has been going up here and I have not been on social media much. Been too sick and dealing with too much. 

Among other things, had to get work done on both cars and that ended up being over a grand. Near as I can tell, Trump's taxes on imports added nearly 400 bucks to the car bills.

And my health stuff gets way worse when the summer heat and humidity kick in. That happened this week when the sky hoses shut off and the furnace jets kicked on. I hate to think what my power bill is going to be in a few days. A journey outside of the house is always hard, but when the temps are in the 90s and the heat index is in the triples, it beats the heck out of me. It is a very long haul from now till late October and I don't know if I have it in me to get there.

On the positive side, all that time sitting in car places, and here in front of fans means I have several books. The reviews were written out on longhand this morning. Reviews have to be typed up and will appear here, hopefully, at least a couple, next week. Scott has a review for tomorrow and Judy Penz  Sheluk has a guest post for Sunday. 

Anyway, in case you wondered or cared, that is what is up.

Smart Girls Read Romance: HELLO, MARCH - SPARE THE STORMS

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Update

The flickering with the power seems to have mostly subsided. We got out a little while ago and got down to our local Kroger which was packed. Looked like the aftermath of an ice storm as around half of the shelves in the meat, dairy, and frozen foods were empty with other empty shelves scattered throughout the place. 

Forecast is for isolated storms this weekend. As always, any story can be severe. 

Numerous trees remain heavily damaged, many are down, and a lot of power lines seem to have come lower than they were. At least we can get out of the neighborhood now. 

Back Online-For Now

If you saw the news about the weather in Dallas Tuesday morning, you know the city got blasted almost as bad as Houston did a couple of weeks ago. We did not have power for over 34 hours. It came on late yesterday afternoon, and then went out for a while overnight. It is on today and the internet is back. How long this holds, I have no idea, as we have heard transformers blow now and then and there is a storm line headed in that should hit around midday. 

I got sick from the heat yesterday, and am generally, in bad shape. Things are going to be slow in getting back to normal around here. 

But, in good news to this point, Scott is fine, the house is intact, the old big tree stayed upright, and we missed the hail and the possible twister that came through the area. 

Hopefully, things stay the same. With Texas weather, one never knows. 

Dallas Storms

We are okay. As I write this just before 9 PM, the last couple of hours have been pretty hairy across the area. It is still raining. We have power though it has flickered and nearly gone out a lot. Many do not and there is a lot of damage around the City as well in other nearby areas. 

I have yet to make it outside to check the cars or roof as the rain and wind continues. I do see numerous branches down in the back yard and stuff in the front yard from the trees of neighbors. 

My nerves are shot. 

10:15 PM Update-- Despite the fact that it is still raining a little bit here, my cane and I have made our way around the house. I can't see much in the beam of my flashlight, but the roof looks okay. I will know better in the morning when the sun is up. Supposed to light rain off and on all night with a wind advisory for winds of 25-50 all night. 

Down The Not So Mean Street

 

Scott and I outside and walking the street earlier today as it was in the low 80s here.

MAKE MINE MYSTERY: Weather As Character by Janis Patterson

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Dallas Weather

First and foremost, thank you to the dozen or so folks who reached out to make sure we are okay. We are and it was good that we did not have to go out today. 

When I was a kid, the old timers used to say you end a drought with a flood. Well, the floods came today as rains of anywhere from six inches to more than a foot hit last night and today. A couple of the nearby city run rain gauges have clocked in more than 15 inches and more than 12 inches. It absolutely poured. 

Rain is in the forecast all week, but the chances of rain are low and nothing like what we just went through is in the forecast. I have a doctor appointment early tomorrow afternoon and am hoping for dry pavement for my feet and my cane as wet surfaces cause bad things to happen for me. 

Power Restored

We lost power about 4:50 AM this morning as a severe thunderstorm powered through Dallas County. We missed the large hail and high winds that happened across the city. After several time changes for it to come back and a bang last hour as it tried to come on, we are finally back on. 

Had three hours sleep last night and am hoping the power stays on. Obviously, the normal things I link to each Monday have been delayed a bit. Will be adding things this afternoon. 

Texas Tormdaoes

A number of folks have written expressing concern, so please let me put those fears to rest. We are fine.

We missed the 11 tornadoes across the local area that started touching down midafternoon and persisted into the evening. We also fortunately did miss the hail though, apparently, there was not nearly as much of that as one would expect with these kinds of storms.  

We did not escape totally unscathed as we had a lightning strike just before two pm yesterday afternoon that took out our power till nearly ten last night. During a break in the storms, we went out and got ice for our two coolers and saved part of the contents of the fridge as our restoration time kept being moved back by Oncor. After the final line of severe weather came through between just after 7 and 8:30 last night, power crews came back and got us up and running.

As the power came on, we heard a very strange noise. Soon Dallas Fire Rescue was parked in the street in front of the house as two transformers behind a neighbor’s house across the street exploded and caught fire. The fire truck left about twenty minutes later and one thought everything was fine.

It was not as over the next two hours, two more transformers on that same ally exploded and caught fire. That meant the flashing lights of fire trucks and utility trucks made repeated visits up and down our street as things went sideways. As this went on to well after midnight, it did not make for a calming evening. I kept what we had salvaged in the two coolers over night as the fridge needed time to chill down and I was not convinced the power would stay on.

It did and I am glad.

I also admit to flinching every time sirens got close today. Ambulances have been in the neighborhood a lot today, as they have since late last week, and as the majority of residents in this area are my age or older, I suspect we might be seeing the start of another Covid wave here. This same sort of thing has happened each time there has been a surge. In each case, we have had ambulances here in the neighborhood several times a day for about a week and then the local officials start warning of a surge.  

Whether it is happening again, I don’t know. I do know we lost a lot of the refrigerator contents as Amazon Fresh had delivered last Friday, but things could have been way worse as various places in our area, around Texas, as well as Oklahoma showed yesterday and the city of New Orleans is showing tonight with another tornado on the ground there as I write this.

All in all, we got very lucky and things could have easily been way worse.

NOAA: Double-dip La Nina emerges

 NOAA: Double-dip La Nina emerges

For Texas, this means that overall we should have a warmer than normal and drier than normal winter season. It also means we can get hammered with a cold air outbreak. Last winter was an example of this situation. Overall, we had a warmer than normal winter and it was drier than normal. We also had the brutal February cold blast event. 

Texas Monthly: Expert Gardening Tips for Texas’s Changing Climate

 Texas Monthly: Expert Gardening Tips for Texas’s Changing Climate

Watch The Gulf

What could be HURRICANE IDA is spinning up in the western Caribbean. Once it crosses and gets by the Yucatan Peninsula, it will be in the very warm waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico and that means it will get way stronger than the current tropical depression status. Expect them to start evacuating oil rigs this weekend out on the Gulf and refineries will shutdown soon afterwards. This will affect everyone nationwide as have the ongoing spot gasoline shortages caused by increased traveling and a shortage  of drivers for fuel trucks. While some of the tracks take it into the coast near New Orleans, other models indicate the Golden Triangle--basically where Texas and Louisiana meet---and home to much of the nation's oil refineries and petro chemical plants. 

So, even if you are nowhere near the coast, keep your gas tank full and stock up on grocery items as what happens on the coast will have a worse ripple effect than normal because of the ongoing supply issues in a variety of industries. If it hits, there are going to be a lot of delays in shipping goods and fuel as a ton of stuff goes through that region. Expect gas prices to steadily increase on a daily basis for the next couple of weeks, at a bare minimum. This will be on top of the normal increase we see each year in the days running up to Labor Day. 

Tornadoes in North Texas

Several were seen around the area though they were not expected or predicted today. One apparently hit in North Dallas for a  short stretch damaging the same area that was hit hard back in 2019 with another twister. Thankfully, we missed all that and are not dealing with flooding that is happening all over the City.

So, if you see news reports about the tornado in North Dallas this afternoon, we were not in the path and are fine. 

Weather Update

The power and the water continues to flow here at Casa Tipple and Home Eatery Library located in NE Dallas. We have been very lucky to have everything stay on and we both are very glad for that. This has been an incredibly stressful event and this old house has made a lot of noises I have not heard since coming back here in the summer of 2017. I have not been sleeping much, not that I do anymore since Sandi passed, but it was been way worse than normal. The noises do not help. More than once each night I have been up with a flashlight checking to make sure we were not leaking water from somewhere after seeing another round of horror stories on the news. Like Covid news when that started, it is easy to watch too much coverage and do a real mental number on yourself. At least, it is that way for me. 

While my front porch is in the shade and still icy and slick as it is shade and faces north, the back porch onto the deck melted almost completely with much of it dry by midafternoon. That meant I could get outside with my cane and carefully wander around the house and eyeball things. We seem to have dodged the roof damage some of the neighbors clearly have on top of dealing with burst pipes. 

At this point, it looks like the only casualty is the old car battery in Sandi's car. I will deal with that later as folks with far more urgent issues are flooding the stores and car repair places. 

The great melting started today as we soared to 60 here at the house Far cry from this and this as the pictures from the front porch taken midafternoon show below. 

There is talk that we may hit 70 on Tuesday and Wednesday. If true, I will be outside reading out there  both days. 

Do Some Damage: The Great Texas Freeze-Out of 2021

Do Some Damage: The Great Texas Freeze-Out of 2021: by Scott D. Parker Well, that was something. As a native Houstonian, I used to look north at winter with a sense of missing out. Look, they ...

Weather Update

We have kept power and water on and have no idea how we have been so lucky. Millions of Texans, including neighbors on the street, have not been so fortunate. An additional couple of inches of sleet and snow rolled through last night into early this morning. The pictures below are of my street this morning looking left and then right from my front porch.

Texas Snow

Good afternoon from NE Dallas where it is nine degrees and a wind chill of minus 15. So far, we have had power. But, there are massive regional outages as well as localized deals due to widespread system failures.  

The first two pictures are my street looking left and then right as seen from the front porch. 

This is the calm before the next storm starting tomorrow night that is supposed to be more of an ice event. Clearly, I will not be sitting on the deck anytime soon.

Winter Storm Warning