First off, all is well here on my little plot of Texas. This weather event was little more than an irritation for me and the family. I’ve had so many messages from M1 users in various parts of the world inquiring as to my situation here amidst the present example of climate change meeting deregulatory stupidity. That’s another discussion altogether of course. This has been in the news just about everywhere and it’s been quite bad a struggle for nearly every Texan, which of itself is strange. This is a very big place, I don’t have to tell you. Amarillo has blizzards; it hardly ever freezes south of San Antonio. We came through just fine; it’s been more of an irritation than serious trouble.
I moved back to the state of my birth 30 years ago. The wife and I chose San Marcos having never visited here. It fit our list, a smallish college town with proximity to Austin, where my brother and his young family lived at the time. Today, Mike is a honcho with the HEB Grocery chain that you may have seen some great stories about in the news this past week. Texans love that grocery store just a tad less than they love their children.
We arrived in 1990. The summer’s have been getting progressively hotter, of course. On the other hand, from late September until June the weather’s as great as any place east of the Rockies. There is ice on the birdbath overnight a couple or five times a winter and it’s usually melted by noon. Monday the 8th, we hit 80f with a low of 43. Thursday night dropped to 32. Friday to 30. Saturday, we winterized; covered the plants, hauled firewood closer to the house, put insulation on the one outside pipe that could pop in a freeze and allowed a modest faucet drip. At 1AM Sunday, Katie woke to tell me the power was out. At 4AM, she woke me to say the water pipes were frozen.
It stayed below freezing until Friday. Sunday’s low was 14. Monday 10, Tuesday 6, then 23 on Wednesday. Friday’s high was 44, Saturday reached 67 and all the snow and ice vanished before noon. We had the fire going and with jackets and blankets, were reasonably comfortable. Katie had filled our chest freezer last year when Co-vid hit and has kept it so. Food wouldn’t be a problem, but cooking it was. The house is all electric. The power returned Sunday afternoon for an hour or so to tease, then went away until about 10pm. It was gone again before I woke, but the house had warmed to around 60. Mostly, the power was off until Thursday.
Water could have been a real problem, but our neighbor over the back fence kept running water so we hauled in what we needed; trudging through the snow. (A three gallon jug of water is 50% heavier when you haul it through ice and snow, by the way.)
Monday, there were two very loud pops in the ceiling. Another loud one from a different part of the ceiling came an hour later. We turned off the water at the main and I called the plumbers and lined up my house-call for as soon as the thaw came, knowing what was coming. After the power had been back on for a few hours, we opened the water main for ten seconds and a cascade came through the ceiling, around the lighting fixtures. My plumber was here Friday, the water is running and the carpenter/dry-wall guy will be here shortly to fix the five big holes the plumber had to cut to get to the pipes.
I got to cook in a cast iron skillet over an open fire. I got to go walking in snow for the first time in three decades. My cabin office is out here in a corner of my back yard, so my commute wasn’t even disrupted (except for no power, eh!). Blessings are being counted.
Steve
PS/Tired of paying rent for an office downtown on the courthouse square, I stepped off a rectangle in the back yard and built my office. This is where I’ve been roosting since 2001. I’ve never seen snow on it until now. Here’s my attempt at an artsy foto:
