A Taste of Spring

Right now, it is 80 degrees, in February. That is weird to me. February is still winter up in Ohio, in fact, most of the country is still experiencing winter. In Ohio, I remember more white Easters than white Christmases.  Normally, I don't look forward to spring because it means that summer is coming and I really hate summer in Texas. Also, spring around here means the season for severe weather is upon us. I remember when Jeff was in the sixth grade. The teacher had told the class to draw pictures that represent spring. She had put them all up on the wall. The pictures were all that of flowers, green grass, sunshine and birds, except for Jeffrey's picture. His drawing was of a tornado ripping through the countryside with debris flying everywhere. Actually, I thought his drawing was cool. Jeffrey's picture was accurate.

Spring around here means severe thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes are a definite possibility. We keep a watch for wall clouds and check the weather websites if the sky darkens. We know if we see the Twistex truck, Dominator or TIV from that storm chasing show racing down the road, that there might a problem with the weather. If they are parked on the side of the road with their cameras out, there definitely is an issue with the weather, especially if we hear the tornado sirens. If we see a funnel cloud, we know for sure that there was a problem with the weather. We also might want to take cover.

One of the vehicles from the Storm Chaser's show

A Tornado 

A wall cloud in our neighborhood back in 2009 - it didn't make a funnel, just rain.

When we lived in Arlington, there were a number of tornadoes in the area. One tore up a neighborhood and an office building real close to where we lived. One went down a street that was near us and you could see where it touched down and where it skipped. There was a trampoline left crumpled up like a wad of paper in  a store's parking lot close to where we lived. We had baseball-sized hail once and it felt like we were being bombed. A large hailstone busted out our skylight and my husband had to cover the hole before the next wave of hail came through. I remember holding the ladder for him and the kids, who were little at the time, were holding on to me. We had to get our roof replaced after that. We haven't had much in the way of tornadoes in McKinney so far, knock-on-wood. We did have a hailstorm where we had to get the roof replaced, but the hailstones weren't quite as large as the ones we had in Arlington. There's never a dull moment in the spring in Texas.

 Today, however, it's really pretty outside. When I went outside, I saw that my purple Hyacinths had bloomed. That really made my day. I love Hyacinths and I love purple flowers and these are really beautiful. I didn't do anything to them, other than put the bulbs in the ground, but they are putting on a beautiful show.

It is warmer than I'd like and it makes me wonder just how hot it will get this summer. I like it better when it's in the sixties. Our chances of snow are waning fast. We didn't get any snow this year, other than a few flurries which was disappointing to me. I wanted to see Stacy build something fun in the snow. One year, she and her friend built a Dalek (from Dr. Who). 

Stacy's Snow Dalek

I'm glad we at least still got a few flurries. We did get a large snowfall in March here one year. One can always hope for a nice snowy blizzard (hopefully on my day off).  Still, I like my purple Hyacinths.