I Am Ready For Spring - How About You?

This has been one strange winter here in Texas and around the country. Some days are cold while others are beautiful. Sometimes we experience huge temperature swings even within the same day. This past week, the weather here in Waco has been cold and very windy and in some ways it reminds me of my youth while growing up in the Texas panhandle. I am so looking forward to spring when the grass and trees start to green up and short sleeve shirts, once again, become the clothing choice of the day.

The northeastern part of the United State has been blanketed now for months in above average snowfall. The past few days have produced a small improvement in the weather reports from major US cities like New York, but thousands of travelers are still stranded because of huge amounts of snow accumulation over the past two weeks. The funniest news headline I have seen in years was published on the Drudge Report about ten days ago that said “Congressional Hearing About Global Warming Canceled Because Of Snow”.

Almost every other week in January and February, here in Central Texas, we have experience sudden but short-lived accumulations of ice. In my opinion, when ice forms on my car it is the worst possible thing to wake up to in the morning. The last big ice storm we had was on “Martin Luther King Day” when I woke up to find almost two inches of ice covering my automobile. Luckily, I had some warning from local weather reports on the ten o’clock news the night before, so I purchased an icescraper and had my one gallon jug of warm water ready to go the next morning before work.

While eating at a fast food restaurant the other day, a girl working there told me she was from Denver, but she was living in Waco while attending Baylor University. I mentioned to her the stories I had been reading about the huge snow accumulations in her hometown and mentioned in passing the fact that snow skiing resorts must love this type of winter weather. Surprisingly she told me that most of the large amounts of snow that have fallen in Colorado have fallen in the Denver metro area while smaller amounts of snow have fallen in the mountains. That is strange, indeed.

Even in the US Heartland there has been very cold weather this winter with some parts of Missouri being covered in ice for weeks and residents in some rural areas losing electrical power for up to a month. When I consider an ice storm that is so bad it causes people to lose electricity for up to a month, it causes me to be thankful that my family didn’t suffer a similar fate here in Texas. In this modern day and age it is difficult for me to imagine homes being without electrical power for more than thirty days, but somehow folks in Missouri and other parts of the Heartland have found a way to manage.

We are only a few short weeks away from spring and these cold winter days will soon become distant memories. However, with this winters strange weather pattern, spring, summer and fall should be interesting to watch. My hope is that once tornado and hurricane season arrive in 2007, there will once again be good news to report when it comes to the damage and injuries that are often associated with that kind of weather.

Related: Weird Weather Changes, Deadly Spring Storms, What Hurricane Season?, Texas Spring Flooding

Ready For Spring