February 25, 2026 Too Hot!

 Too Hot

Living in what is considered a semi-arid region of Texas, winter weather is usually pretty mild.  There will be maybe two or three 'blue northers', cold fronts, come through bring chilly weather.  The temperatures typically stay above freezing.  The 13 winters since we have moved from southwest Missouri to Central Texas have been unusual.  Snow and/or ice have occurred at least 4 or 5 of the years.  Just three weeks ago there was a cover of sleet and snow mixture that stayed on the ground for 3 days.  In shady areas the cover lasted another day or two.

In January 2021 a week long frigid front came through into Texas.  It even reached the The Valley, Lower Rio Grande, and froze the vegetable crops.  The strain on the power grid actually took the system down in several areas.  Our apartment unit was without power for a week.  We had only electric heat therefore our temperature in the apartment was 40 degrees F.  Our son and grandson insisted we come to their home where they had power.  We agreed on the 3rd day.  They would not let us drive because they considered us too old to be out in the weather.  lol.

Son's home backed up to a retention pond.  It was cold enough that the pond froze deep enough to be walked on.  One family even brought out their hockey equipment.  The dad was schooling his children on the fine art of hockey.  Not at all a typical scene in Central Texas.

The pond without humans risking their lives.

As mentioned earlier in the post, it was quite cold, like in the low teens, just a few weeks back.  Sunday night was in the low 30s.  Today the temperature was in the mid 80's and will approach 90 tomorrow.  It is giving our thermostat settings a real workout.  

Here are charts for the last two months:

As you can see we are having wide swings. But the grid has not had a major failure so far.  However our breaker just tripped for our living room.  No idea why as we have only a couple of laptops, a lamp, google home, and a ceiling fan.  And of course our two electric recliners.  Wanna come help me up so I can reset the breaker?  

Life is fun some days!

Janice