The Charlie Brown Syndrome

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I've been watching the weather forecasts unusually closely lately because those of us here in north Texas appear to be on the cusp of an important — and, for most of us, welcome — shift.

I'm speaking of nature's seemingly endless grip of triple–digit temperature readings we've had in this area this summer.

Now, it's been a scorcher across most of the country this summer, as it usually is — and it is always hot in Texas — but the summer of 2011 has been one of those truly extreme summers — like the ones in 1980 and 1998 — that people talk about for years.

Almost without exception, our temperatures this summer have been over 100° every day for more than two months. In Texas, we expect to see some 100° temperatures each summer. But not dozens of them.

There have been a few days when the temperature didn't make it to 100° — and only once, I believe, when it was significantly below 100° — but, most of the time, it has been like a cruel game of bait and switch.

The "bait," in this case, has been the occasional prediction of a daytime high that fell short of 100° or a night–time low that dropped below 80°. The forecasters start speaking of this glimmer of hope about a week ahead of time, when it first appears on the computer models, but the closer we get to the day when it is supposed to happen, the farther back the forecasters push the line until there is nothing left.

That's the "switch," and I have started thinking of it as the Charlie Brown Syndrome.

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If you're old enough to remember the "Peanuts" comic strip, it's like those periodic strips when Lucy would con Charlie Brown into trying to kick the football. She insisted that she would hold the ball for him, but, when he agreed to kick it and came running to kick it, she pulled it away at the last second, and he fell flat on his back.

And, as Charlie Brown lay there, flat on his back, Lucy would come up to him with some sort of punchline. Usually, whatever she said managed to both justify her decision to pull the ball away from him just before he could kick it and contradict the argument she had made to convince him — against his better judgment — to try to kick it in the first place.

You always knew what was coming when you saw Lucy with a football. It was a running gag — and a generally harmless one, too (except as far as Charlie Brown was concerned).

Maybe that is what has been so insidious about these sub–100° forecasts. It's been like Lucy's trickery with the football, but it hasn't been harmless.

People have died in the heat wave of 2011, as they do in every heat wave. Utility bills have gone through the roof, adding stress to already overextended household budgets.

There's been some relief in other parts of the country, but Texas has been waiting — not always patiently but waiting nevertheless. And our deliverance may be at hand. Finally.

For about a week, people around here have been told that a cool front is on its way and will bring temperatures down this week.

Yesterday, as usual, temperatures exceeded 100°, but it was 75° when I got up this morning, and it is supposed to be right around 90° for today's high. That's better than it has been, but not where I would like it to be.

Tonight, the forecasters tell us, we will see, temperatures dipping into the low 60s, possibly the upper 50s. We haven't heard those words in four or five months, and we have good reason to be skeptical. But the forecast suggests that this is what we can expect all week — along with temperatures in the 80s — and they haven't been pushing the line back as we have gotten closer to this, our transition day.

The forecasters are predicting a high temperature tomorrow that is lower than the temperature as I write this at 8 a.m. on Sunday. It is currently 86°, and the forecasters say it won't get above 83° tomorrow.

We'll see.

How Hot Is It?

It's been nearly 20 years since Johnny Carson left The Tonight Show, but, if you can remember when he was the show's host, you can probably remember many of his ongoing routines.

I'm thinking of one in particular that was usually likely to surface during Carson's monologue, but it could happen at any time. It frequently popped up when something really extreme had been happening — for example, a lot more (or a lot less, for that matter) rain than usual.

He would say something like, "It was so wet (or dry) today that ..." and, before he could finish the joke, the audience would roar as one, "How wet (or dry) was it?"

As I say, it could be anything extreme — or anything, at least, that was perceived to be extreme. It could be "Dan Quayle is so dumb" or "Al Gore is so wooden."

Weather was always a good source, but it could be anything. Carson and his writers could be very creative at times.

(All together now — How creative were they?)

Lately, as the nation has been enduring the kind of heat wave that usually seems to be reserved only for Texas, I've been missing Carson.

Well, actually, as far as I am concerned, late night TV has never been the same since he left — so missing Carson is not a new thing for me — but, when there's something in progress like this heat wave, I really miss him.

These times cry out for an opportunity for heat–weary people to shout in unison, "How hot is it?"

Jacy Marmaduke of the Dallas Morning News has been keeping area residents advised as local temperatures have cracked triple digits daily for four straight weeks now.

Recently, this summer's heat wave claimed the second slot on the historical list. It overtook the summer of 1998 a few days ago.

I was living in Dallas in the summer of 1998, and that was, indeed, a brutal summer. I was working for a trade magazine and I had to cover a trade show in Chicago that July. While I was there, I encountered quite a few people who had come from places to the north — and some were complaining of the heat.

Personally, I didn't find the heat in Chicago nearly as severe as the weather I had just left. The difference was noticeable upon my return.

I don't think that would be true this summer. Nearly the entire country has been sweltering. It's been easing lately in places where it usually doesn't get that hot, but much of the country remains in the heat wave's grip.

Depending upon the cloud cover we have, our streak of triple–digit days may come to an end around here tomorrow — but, even if it does, the immediate forecast suggests that a brand–new streak is likely to begin on Sunday, and that one seems certain to continue for awhile.

Besides, as a meteorologist told Marmaduke, there isn't much difference between 99° and 100°. The difference is almost entirely psychological.

If the streak does not end tomorrow, the summer of 2011 may well go down as the hottest on record — at least in terms of consecutive 100° days.

To accomplish that, it will have to exceed the triple–digit streak of 1980 — and it just might do that, but it will never match the intensity of the summer of 1980.

I remember that one, too.

I wasn't living in Dallas in those days, but my grandmother was, and I remember coming here with my mother to visit my grandmother, who was starting to experience symptoms of dementia.

Daytime highs in 1980 seemed to get past 100° before noon and just kept climbing through the afternoon. I remember several days when temperatures flirted with 110° (the worst actually exceeded 110° a few times) — and I remember driving on the streets of Dallas and hearing the asphalt squish beneath the tires.

In 1980, a daytime high of only 100° was seen by some as a sign of an imminent cool front (it never was, but hope sprang eternal. Those triple–digit temperatures were daily facts of life for more than six weeks).

Needless to say, you could do a lot more than fry an egg on the pavement.

This summer's heat wave has been a scorcher, but the summer of 1980 (if it possessed human characteristics) would scoff. I can just imagine the things it would say. "Amateur!" it would sneer. "In my day, I gave 'em heat they're still talking about three decades later."

If some have their way, though, that consecutive triple–digit streak will tumble, and the summer of 2011 will be atop the list when all is said and done.

Marmaduke quotes a 15–year–old from Plano who wants a streak he can tell his grandkids about.

All I can say is, be careful what you wish for.

There Will Come Soft Rains

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"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence–wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."

Sara Teasdale
(1884–1933)

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Yesterday was another 100–plus–degree day here in Dallas.

I don't know how many straight days of this we have had. I'm sure we've cracked the old century mark every day in July, and the streak probably goes back to the last few days of June.

How long will it continue? I don't know. I check the NOAA website every day, and the last time I looked at it, the temperatures in this area were supposed to be in triple digits at least until this time next week. NOAA's forecasts don't go beyond a week — and Texas weather is notorious for changing without notice — so it may well be weeks before we see our next sub–100° day around here.

I've heard that, statistically, this is just a typical summer in north Texas, and I've lived through enough Texas summers in my life to know that there is a certain amount of truth in that. It's been common knowledge for a long time that it gets really hot here. The average temperatures in July and August are in the mid–90s, but it isn't uncommon for the temperature to exceed 100°.

Every summer, in fact — and often in the spring and autumn months, too — I am frequently reminded of one of my favorite quotations. It came from Union Gen. Phil Sheridan, who is remembered in the history books for his march to the sea, during which he burned the city of Atlanta (an event that was vividly re–created in "Gone With the Wind").

For a time before the Civil War, Sheridan was assigned to a fort in Texas along the Rio Grande. The experience of living here prompted him to say, "If I owned hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in hell."

Sheridan, of course, lived here long before the invention of air conditioning, but I have encountered no disagreement with him among people who have lived here since A/C came along. If anything, those who live here today tend to resent the way they think the utility companies take advantage of heat waves like the one we've been experiencing this summer.

Air conditioning is a necessary evil here, especially when it is as hot as it has been lately. We are constantly reminded that heat is responsible for more deaths around here than any other meteorological cause. Makes sense. There's always more of it.

Anyway, to protect ourselves from the heat, we must run the air conditioning. We have no choice — and, when the daytime highs exceed 100° and the nighttime lows don't even go below 80°, the air conditioning seems to run ceaselessly.

And that leads to incredibly high utility bills — which are never welcome, especially at a time when gas prices are still well over $3/gallon.

But it will end ... eventually.

It was that thought that reminded me of Teasdale's poem from the collection titled "Flame and Shadow" that was published in 1920.

Well, I thought of the title of the poem more than the poem itself — because the poem itself speaks of a post–apocalyptic war world in which humanity has been destroyed and nature starts to reclaim the planet.

I'll grant you, scorched earth might be a good description of this place when the heat wave finally does subside — but that's the point. It will subside.

The temperature will drop — and cool, soft rains will return.

Someday. Maybe soon. Maybe not. But someday.

The White Stuff

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We're enduring another round of winter weather here in north Texas.

Dallas looks a lot like it did last week, with freezing rain and a little snow.

An acquaintance of mine posted this on Facebook today. It kind of sums things up.

There were a lot of people who complained about the terrible weather we had here in the days just before Sunday's Super Bowl.

A Super Bowl should always be played in a warm–weather city, they said. Well, good luck finding one that also happens to meet the NFL's requirement that a city cannot host a Super Bowl unless it also has an NFL franchise.

Fact is, this is pretty unusual weather for Dallas. I've lived here for most of the last 22 years, and I visited here on a regular basis when I was a child — and on rare occasions it does get cold and it does snow, but mostly what we get around here when it gets cold is ice.

We don't get that much of it around here, anyway. Besides, the weekend before the Super Bowl was balmy.

That's the kind of thing people are accustomed to around here. The weather can change in the blink of an eye — except in the summer, when it rarely deviates from "hot" and stays that way from April to October.

The people from Pittsburgh and Green Bay who were whining about Texans' "wimpy" responses to the winter weather need to come down here sometime in the summer — when the temperature is over 100°.

They'll find that most Texans are accepting of the heat. They expect it every year. They may not like the high utility bills or having to get in cars that have been sitting exposed to the summer heat all day, but it doesn't catch them by surprise. It's part of the bargain they made when they decided to live here.

But ice and snow wasn't part of that deal. That's why all those Packer fans and Steeler fans found there were no snow plows around here to make it easy for them to get around last week. Snow plows would be an unconscionable waste of public funds — and that is in the best of times.

It has been said that Jerry Jones wants to bring the Super Bowl back to Dallas for the 50th anniversary in February 2016. It has also been said that many folks want to play that game in Los Angeles. That is where the first Super Bowl was played, and L.A. is, after all, a warm–weather location.

But L.A., once home to two NFL franchises, is now home to none. Either an existing franchise will have to move there, or a new franchise will have to be created there — or the NFL will have to change its own rules.

And even if the NFL does change its rules, there are very few American cities, even L.A., that can promise mild, sunny weather in February. The best any can do is to point to the historical trend and claim that the odds favor one thing or another — and that trend in Dallas has generally favored mostly mild conditions.

But anything can happen here, as the cartoon above clearly illustrates. Texans know that. That's why they can sit back and chuckle about a Super Bowl that didn't produce the kind of economic windfall they expected because the weather turned nasty.

That's Texas for you, they're surely saying today. The temperatures were really nice the weekend before the Super Bowl. If everything had been done a week earlier, it would have paid off the way everyone hoped and expected.

Texans have reputations for being gamblers, and I suspect that most would understand what a friend and former co–worker (and frequent gambler) used to say about sure things.

There's no such thing, he would say, as a sure thing. That's why they call it gambling.

Scheduling a Super Bowl in north Texas was a gamble — weatherwise.

I'm sorry if it disappointed our visitors from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. I would have liked to oblige them by providing them with sunny skies and warm temperatures during their visit, and, as I say, if everything had been held a week earlier, we could have.

But the weather turned on us. It was one of those Texas things.

All things considered, I'll take the winter we're having over the one they're having.

In Honor of Groundhog Day ...

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Did you ever see the movie "Groundhog Day?"

Of course you did. I guess that's sort of like asking if you ever saw "Forrest Gump" ... or ... "Titanic."

Anyway, since you almost certainly have seen "Groundhog Day," I'm sure I won't have to mention the general theme of the story — but I will anyway.

The star, Bill Murray, kept living the same day (Groundhog Day) over and over again.

Shoot, the idea has almost become a cliche. If you mention "Groundhog Day" to anyone, it's practically code language for experiencing a really bad sense of deja vu.

Locally, we've taken that concept to new extremes lately.

The icy weather we've been experiencing this week apparently has put an excessive demand on the state power grid. To keep from having total blackouts, so–called "rolling blackouts" were initiated.

I knew nothing about this when the first one occurred in my neighborhood. It came shortly before 6 a.m. I was still in bed, and there wasn't much noise or light in my apartment at that hour so my first indication that anything was different was when I woke up and realized I felt cold. I looked at my clock, and the digital numbers were not illuminated — and right away I knew the power was off.

I was searching in the dark for a flashlight when the power came back on about 20 minutes after it went off. I fixed some breakfast and watched the national news. The apartment was warming up again — and the power went off.

It came back on about 20 minutes later, and I immediately checked some local news sources. That was when I learned about the rolling blackouts.

In a way, it was a relief.

I've been living in these apartments for more than 10 years now, and we've had our issues with the utilities. In all fairness, it isn't always a complex issue; sometimes it is the provider's fault. My point is that it is a recurring theme.

Last March, for example, early on a Sunday morning, someone apparently ran his/her car into the power station that serves my apartment complex, and power was cut to all the customers who were served by that station.

Snow had been falling for about an hour before the accident. I never heard whether the snow contributed to what happened, but I have a pretty good idea that it did. All I know is we got a ton of the stuff that day — extremely unusual for Dallas, Texas.

I tried repeatedly to reach someone at my apartment complex office, but no one was in the office. The power was off all day, and residents couldn't contact anyone.

There have been other episodes like that, and I wasn't anxious to repeat them, but the knowledge that these rolling blackouts were happening everywhere was reassuring. It meant that the fault wasn't with the apartment complex and it wasn't with the provider. It seemed more like an act of God.

After awhile, though, I began to feel like Bill Murray, looking for new ways to make the most use of the hour of power that I would get before being plunged into a comparatively brief period of nothing.

There is talk that there will be more of these rolling blackouts tomorrow. Local temperatures are not expected to rise above the mid 20s.

Makes me nostalgic for those days when temperatures around here were in the 70s. Was it only last weekend?

My Street Becomes an Ice Rink

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Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

This was the scene in front of my apartment a few minutes ago.

Just to set the stage for you, we got rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow here in Dallas starting early this morning and continuing until a little while ago. Even now, we're getting some blowing snow, but the snow isn't as heavy as it was.

Snow isn't the problem, though. It never really is. There are times when snow is a little slippery, and that keeps it from being a very pleasant experience, but ice is never a pleasant experience, whether you're walking on it or trying to drive on it.

It's deceptive, too. The pavement may look all right until you're on top of it — then, you quickly discover that it isn't all right, after all.

And neither are you. If you're on foot, you are apt to find yourself going from vertical to horizontal with no warning. And if you're behind the wheel, you may find yourself spinning out of control.

Apparently, some seemingly clear spots deceived some drivers on my street. None of the vehicles in the above picture were in motion.

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It doesn't look like we're going to get above freezing around here for a few days, which means anything that is slush when the sun goes down will turn to ice overnight. Driving could be pretty hazardous.

Stay tuned for future developments.

It Oughta Be Obvious

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So far, those of us who live in north Texas have been spared the brunt of the winter weather this year.

If you don't live in this part of the country, your reaction may be to shrug your shoulders at that little tidbit of news. Most people seem to think that Texas is a hot, sweltering place all year round.

Well, it is a hot, sweltering place for much of the year. But it can get cold here in the winter. Last year, we set a local record for the most snowfalls in a single winter season.

Nothing even remotely like that has happened so far this year. Sure, it has been cold and there have been a few snow flurries, but nothing like last year.

That's going to be great for the folks who come here for the Super Bowl in a few weeks, no matter who wins on Sunday. I think it goes without saying that whether the fans come here from Green Bay or Chicago, Pittsburgh or New York, the weather here will be nicer than what they've been dealing with lately.

I'm not saying they should pack their sun blocker and summer clothes before they come here — unless the weather forecast calls for unseasonably warm temperatures (which it might — I met a friend for lunch a few days before Christmas, and the temperature got into the 80s that day). But they can expect milder temperatures while they're here.

(I wouldn't recommend that they come back in July or August, though.)

This Sunday afternoon, while the Packers and Bears are playing in Chicago, the daytime high here in Dallas is predicted to be around 50° with a chance of rain. The forecast for Chicago calls for a daytime high that is nearly 30 degrees colder. It will be even colder in Green Bay.

Sunday evening, it will cool down into the 40s around here, but it will be about half that in Pittsburgh, where the AFC championship will be decided. It should be much the same in New York.

A lot of things could happen in the next 2½ weeks, but my best guess is that conditions won't be significantly different than they are now so Dallas should seem comparatively balmy, whether you're coming here from Green Bay or Chicago or New York or Pittsburgh.

Ah, yes, Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh is where the above video was shot. I'm told it was made yesterday.

Now, Pittsburgh is roughly 1,000 miles northeast of here. Seems to me that the folks who live there should be well acquainted with the hazards of driving in winter conditions.

To be fair, ice is the kind of thing folks in this part of the country usually have to deal with. If we're going to get anything in the way of winter precipitation around here, it is likely to be ice. Pittsburgh always seems to get snow in the winter.

And I would a whole lot rather drive on snow than ice. I've tried to drive on ice before. And, brother, let me tell you that it ain't no fun.

Ice is the kind of thing you get when you're sort of caught in the middle. It isn't warm enough where you are for precipitation to be rain, and it isn't quite cold enough to be snow. They call it freezing rain around here.

I don't know what they call it in Pittsburgh. Whatever it is, there must be some sort of technical explanation for why those folks had ice on the roads yesterday instead of snow. But it looks like a lot of people in Pittsburgh just have no clue about driving on icy roads.

So let me tell you the main rules about driving on ice. Then, you'll have them when you are faced with this problem:

Rule #1 for driving on icy roads — Don't.

Rule #2 — Obey all rules.

Stormy Weather

They've been getting a lot of snow north of here this winter.

And through much of it, Dallas has been spared.

That is, in fact, typical. There have been winters when we had little, if any, measurable snowfall around here. You can find people who can tell you about Februarys — Januarys, too, for that matter — when the temperatures were in the 70s, even 80s, and men wore short sleeves and women wore shorts.

But this year has been an exception. We've had several snow "events" this winter — my pastor says five, and I haven't been keeping count so I will assume he is correct.

Every such "event" has had a significance of its own. One snow event was special, not because it left much of a trace of itself but because it represented (as I recall) more days in which snow fell on Dallas than any other winter since they started keeping track of these things.

For the first time since I've been living here, we had a white Christmas — and I've lived here since 1996 plus my family came here to visit my grandparents on just about every Christmas of my childhood.

And yesterday was the mother of all snow events in Dallas. We had snow or snow mixed with rain just about all day yesterday. Until it got dark, the temperatures hovered at or just above freezing. The streets were wet, but they weren't slick. Meanwhile, some snow accumulated in tree branches and on lawns as the day proceeded.

I usually meet my father for dinner on Thursday nights, and we didn't let the weather interfere with our plans this week, but, as I was driving to meet him, I heard a man on the radio report that we were only a fraction of an inch away from setting a record for the most snowfall in a day. All I had to do was look through my windshield to know we would break that record.

And we did. The Fort Worth Star–Telegram says we bettered the existing record by about 3½ inches. It was still snowing when Dad and I left the restaurant. And it was still snowing several hours later. I was a witness to it. I had been home for about an hour when the lights began to flicker, then went out. So I went into the bedroom, opened the blinds and gazed out my window at the snow as it continued to fall. It was beginning to accumulate on the street, and traffic was moving slower.

I guess I was luckier than many folks. My power was restored about 90 minutes after it went out. By that time, it was getting cold in my apartment, but it warmed up when the power came back on. The Dallas Morning News reports that crews were still trying to restore service to 180,000 customers today, and it is said the repair work could "stretch into the weekend."

Residents have been asked to minimize water use. Hundreds of flights have been canceled. High school sports events have been canceled or postponed.

It was about as close as one is apt to get to a "blizzard" around here — assuming one is not referring to the ice cream treat at Dairy Queen.

I don't think the folks in Minneapolis would call it a blizzard. Nor would the folks in Pittsburgh or Chicago or New York or Boston. Those folks know what a blizzard is.

But folks in Dallas — well, the lifelong residents, anyway — have no idea what a blizzard is.

I do have an idea what it is. I went to school in the Ozarks, where we got snow and lots of it in the winter. I remember walking to campus in blizzards, and I remember walking along streets only hours after a blizzard had ended. I remember the solitary sound my boots made as they crunched the snow. I remember that, unlike my experience growing up in the lowlands of central Arkansas, snow in northwest Arkansas didn't melt off by midday, and it often stayed long enough to be topped by a fresh layer of snow several days later.

In Dallas, I am a few hundred miles farther south than I was when I was in elementary school. It is even more common around here for snow to fall during the night, then be gone by lunch, than it was in my hometown.

And it's true that the snow is gone from the streets this afternoon. Traffic seems to be moving normally, although there probably won't be as much of it as usual since so many businesses and schools did not open today.

But there's still quite a bit of snow in yards. You can't always tell how much there is, but you can look at footprints in the snow and see that it is still quite deep in some places — certainly more than the dusting we're accustomed to.

Well, it should all be gone tomorrow. It's supposed to get up to 49°. A week from now, I've heard that a high of near 60° is expected.

Now that is what folks in Dallas expect this time of year.

It's Snowing in Dallas ...

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It's about a quarter past 5 p.m. in Dallas, Texas, on December 29. And it is snowing.

But if you're one of my readers who lives someplace where it really snows in the winter, let me warn you. This is a Dallas, Texas kind of snowfall. It's snowing and raining simultaneously. The snowflakes are almost indistinguishable from the raindrops — except that the raindrops are just a little bit faster in their descent.

I thought about taking a digital photograph of it and posting it, but, at this point, I don't think the eye could tell the difference between snowflakes and raindrops in a still photo. You could tell that something was coming down, but you have to watch it come down to comprehend what is happening.

Besides, there's no accumulation. The ground is warm enough that snowflakes melt on impact, if not while they're still airborne.

Talking about a Dallas snowfall is almost an oxymoron. It's like talking about an Anchorage heat wave. (What would that be, anyway? A daytime high of 70° on the Fourth of July?)

We had a pretty significant snowfall (for Dallas) on Christmas Eve. There was enough of it that the pastor at my church was inspired to go on Facebook and tell people that it qualified as a white Christmas — in case the snow melted by morning, which it tends to do in north Texas. Well, the snow never did anything much to the streets, but it did accumulate on grass and rooftops, and we really did have a white Christmas morning in Dallas.

The snow began to melt away as the daytime temperatures rose above freezing, but places that were shaded kept the accumulated snow awhile longer. By Christmas night, most of the snow was gone, but you could still see some patches here and there.

Just north of here, in Oklahoma, I heard about accumulation and snowdrifts. Roads were closed. Here in Dallas, we got the sense that we had narrowly avoided some really severe weather.

This time, it looks like it won't even get cold enough for much, if any, of this snow to still be snow by sunrise.

Such is the nature of snowfall in Dallas.

A Little Night Music

How is the weather where you are?

Here in Dallas, Texas, we seem to be going through a seasonal transition that is more extensive than usual. Ordinarily, my impression has been that we get about two weeks of spring and two weeks of fall, and the rest of the time it is either summer or winter. But the whole month of October seems to have been wetter and milder than usual, and I cannot tell if that means we can expect a colder than usual winter, one that is perhaps more prolonged than what we have experienced in recent years.

That might not be a bad thing if it meant some of the insects get killed off.

As I write this, we expect a shift of nearly 30 degrees, from around 76 during the afternoon to below 50 overnight. I am not sure what that says about what to expect. I just know it seems a little radical for my system.

Anyway, the weather has put me in a reflective mood.

And I thought I would share a few appropriate songs with you. I do not know what the weather is like where you are. And these are not all meteorologically inspired. But tomorrow is Friday, the last day of the week for those of you lucky enough to still have jobs. The day before Halloween, for those of you with children or plans to dress yourself up for some trick or treating.

This is not really in line with either of those moods. I guess this is a sort of stream of consciousness. And it is my gift to you.

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Texas Weather

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Three weeks ago, this was a "snowstorm" in North Texas.

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Nationally, today's weather is wet and cold in many locations.

It's been the same here, but Texas weather is notorious.

This is a huge state, second only to Alaska in area (268,581 square miles), and its location (where several climate zones intersect) means varied weather patterns.

Some areas get extremely cold winters with quite a bit of snow (primarily the Panhandle and mountainous parts of West Texas). Winters are milder to the south and along the Gulf Coast.

Here in North Texas, it might snow once or twice in a typical winter, but that's about it. And "snow" here is rarely significant — which seems to be a letdown for many people who move here from northern sections of the nation.

What is consistent about weather in Texas is that it gets hot here — usually by mid-spring and continuing until mid- to late fall — and this part of the state lies in the famed "Tornado Alley," which is a by-product of the frequent thunderstorms this area experiences in the spring.

The popular saying here is that, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. It will change.

The forecast for today called for freezing rain in the Dallas area. We've been getting plenty of rain today, and the temperatures have been in the low 30s (at the moment, NOAA reports that the temperature is right at freezing — 32°), but the streets, while wet, are not terribly slick.

But that old saying appears to be true — in general. Tonight's forecast calls for more rain and temperatures in the 30s, but a general warming trend is in the forecast for the remainder of the week — with a high of 56° tomorrow, 66° on Wednesday and 70° on Thursday and Friday.

It may feel colder, though. Gusty winds are expected through Wednesday.