weather excitement

[marni]

Thursday afternoon we actually had the first measureable rain since early January, a whole 1/2 " worth although some other smaller areas got more.

Today we equaled the highest temperature ever for Houston- 109. Tomorrow we should start a three day run on breaking the state records. Whoo Hoo!

My poor DIL who has recently moved from California to Virginia to become a professor of linguistics at Mary Washington University has already been through her first ever earthquake. Now she is going through her first ever hurricane. Her husband (#1 son ) is currently stuck in Denver because of the hurricane and airline issues.

Poor her, and poor him. What an introduction to the east coast. She may end up moving back to California ASAP.

My other son is in New York City and is already bemoaning the lack of subway and transportation. He's not in danger of flooding but may have to take time off work. Good thing they got their vacation at Fire Island in last week.

Anyone besides me beginning to think Mother Nature might be a bit PO ed? And a recently completed study points out that people in areas of high heat (read La Nina) tend to be more irritable and more violent. No kidding- how many million dollars did it take to figure that out?

Marni

[bmccasland]

Yup, Mother Nature isn't happy.

Glad to hear that you got some rain in Texas. Now another 1/2 inch per day... my Mom is parched in Austin.

[ny biker]

Congrats on the rain!! I wish I could send you some from here. It's slamming my windows pretty hard right now.

I'm impressed that your DIL never experienced an earthquake in California.

[ny biker]

BTW tell your son to kick back and enjoy the bike race tomorrow. As long as he's in Denver he might as well have some fun.

[Aggie_Ama]

We had a short (VERY SHORT) shower on Wednesday in Austin and I thought my Facebook news feed would go insane. It was nice that it finally broke the stranglehold of 100 degree days. Almost every piece of our landscaping, including my beloved verigated agave is in distress. Our HOA told me someone in the neighborhood has actually been filing complaints about the houses with dead landscaping but they are not going to tell anyone to replant until we get enough rain to come off our severe water restrictions. They actually scaled them back for the moment to hand water one day a week and sprinklers one day a week.

Not to make light of those going through floods and hurricanes, but the drought in Texas has begun killing livestock, crops and is starting to bankrupt the little guys. I can't even read or watch anymore news about it. I rode yesterday through a neighborhood in Austin that is just now getting mandatory water restrictions, it was so bizarre they still have partially green grass.

[bmccasland]

I remember a drought that bad in Arizona. Livestock was dieing all over the place. I lived on a fish hatchery at the time and we had a spring fed meadow inside the hatchery fence. The open range cattle outside the hatchery could smell the water and grass, managed to break in. Seems we waited a couple of days for some mercy feeding before calling the reservation cattle office (the hatchery was on an Indian Reservation) to come get the errant cattle.

[PamNY]

Wish I could send you the water from the many buckets I filled in case of power outage.