A winter storm\/extreme cold front has hit this weekend, with overnight temperatures falling into the \u2018well-below-freezing\u2019 range; rare indeed for this part of Texas. \u00a0Our planting zone falls around \u201c9\u201d \u2013 which generally means that warm-weather plants \u2013 banana trees, citrus, ferns and the like \u2013 generally do rather well. The occasional snow that stays for longer than a couple of hours after sunrise is a rare happening. Like about every twenty years or so. But one of those last long-predicted winter blasts hit a little less than two years ago and hit so catastrophically that everyone\u2019s memories are still quite unpleasantly fresh \u2026 especially memories of how badly our civic power authorities bungled a long-predicted cold front which left much of suburban San Antonio freezing in the dark, and without tap water. A foot of snow on the ground, too \u2013 which would have left places in the Northern tier doubled over laughing; \u2018That\u2019s not winter \u2026 this (pointing to four feet and more on the ground for weeks and months on end) is winter!\u2019 But the naked fact is that places like Ogden, Utah, Denver, Colorado, and Truckee, California are set up to cope with lots of snow and prolonged freezing temperatures, and South Texas is not. (What we are<\/u> set up for is months of summer heat at temperatures in the three figures.)<\/p>\n
Every one of my neighbors whose memories of the Great Snowmagedden of February, 2021 are uncomfortably vivid grimly prepped for something like it to happen again: stocking up on any groceries to be needed in the next week, making certain that electronic devices are charged, and that we are stocked up on propane, bottled water and toilet paper. The word on Next Door is that various HEB groceries are entirely out of canned soups and the like. Probably bread, milk and sandwich fixings, too. What saved a lot of my neighbors and I during Snowmagedden was having camping gear, propane camping stoves or barbeques, and a lot of blankets and firewood. We made out OK, generally \u2013 not happy about it all, especially the owners of one house which burned because the fire department couldn\u2019t pull water from the hydrants because the pipes were frozen or empty \u2013 but we all remembered the week of misery. Hence the grim preparations, just in case. Our faith and trust in the power grid and those who manage it has been considerably reduced in the last couple of years. If what I heard on a walkabout during the last prolonged power outage this spring, at least a dozen neighbors have bought and set up household generators.<\/p>\n
Right now it\u2019s overcast and 30 degrees outside, and it\u2019s late afternoon. The temperature will drop after sunset: a hard freeze is predicted for tonight, and pretty much the same for the next few days. We\u2019ve taken the few tender plants that the hot, rainless summer didn\u2019t kill into the garage, hung a blanket over the front door, and drawn the curtains and shutters over the windows to preserve as much of the warmth as possible. The dogs and cats are all inside and sheltered \u2013 at least this time around, we don\u2019t have chickens to keep inside, too. The battery lanterns, our cellphones and my Kindle are all on their chargers \u2013 so, we\u2019ll see what develops. Already, the inside walls and windows are cold to touch. We\u2019ll keep the heat on tonight, which is not our usual custom, but with Wee Jamie as part of the household now, we can\u2019t long endure an excessively cold house.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A winter storm\/extreme cold front has hit this weekend, with overnight temperatures falling into the \u2018well-below-freezing\u2019 range; rare indeed for this part of Texas. \u00a0Our planting zone falls around \u201c9\u201d \u2013 which generally means that warm-weather plants \u2013 banana trees, citrus, ferns and the like \u2013 generally do rather well. The occasional snow that stays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aint-that-america","category-domestic","category-eat-drink-and-be-merry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10017"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10018,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10017\/revisions\/10018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncobrief.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}