Wacky Weather

This weekend the boys had planned a campout with some of David's friends and their fathers. Unfortunately, they will have to postpone the outing due to snow in the forecast! I have to say: I lived in Texas for nine years before going to BYU and in those nine years, I saw snow once. In the two years I have been back in Texas, I have seen snow twice. Global warming?

Well, I thought I would dedicate this blog to the wacky weather I saw while growing up in Texas. When I was in junior high or high school, there was a hurricane in the Gulf that hit land around the Houston area. Wichita Falls, where I grew up, is on the Texas - Oklahoma border, pretty far north of Houston, but we still got a lot of rain from the dispersion of the storm system over land. I remember going to Target in the afternoon; the sky was gray and threatened rain. When we came out about a half-hour or so later, the sky was pitch black and pouring sheets of rain. The torrential rain didn't impress me so much as the dark sky in the afternoon did.

A year or two later, a couple of tornadoes touched down in the small towns that surround Wichita Falls. My family was traveling north, toward the air force base, which also happened to be toward one of the towns where a tornado had been. The dust and the dirt colored the north sky dark brown. I was very scared and desperately wanted to go home, which was south, away from the storm.

Since we returned to Texas I have continued to witness the incredible potential energy stored up on Mother Earth. Shortly before James was born, we had a wonderfully typical Texas thunderstorm: lightning, thunder, and strong winds that blew torrential rain sideways. The next day we were chatting with our neighbor who had recently moved here from California. She described how scared she had been. I kept silent, though I thought to myself that wasn't that scary, just a typical Texas-sized storm (yeah, yeah; it's a Texas pride thing). A week or two later I started panicking: the sky had turned yellow-brown, which to me meant there was a potential tornado nearby. Sure enough, the city's warning sirens went off. We turned on the news: a tornado had formed in Arlington, a few miles west of where I occasionally shop. All we got was rain, but I was sufficiently scared for the rest of the evening, worried that I might sleep through more siren warnings.

Yesterday, the snow storm that piled 5" in some cities and 7" in others a mere half-hour north of Grand Prairie missed us. We escaped with a couple inches of rain and freezing temperatures. In lieu of their campout, the boys have invited their friends to come over for hot dogs and smores in a warm, cozy house sheltered from the elements (or "elephants" as Jesse misheard when I was praying the other night).