Today, we are promised, will be in the low 80s. Likewise tomorrow. But not Thursday. Daytime Thursday is to drop 20 degrees until nightfall brings an arctic blast that lasts the weekend into next week, plunging daytime temps into the 30s with freezing rain. Or sleet if you want to get technical.
Weather extremes are what Texas is all about, but 50 degrees difference in a few days is pushing it. Must be global warming, as Wormtongue’s hencethings have insisted since at least 2009. They must raise our taxes so they can solve the problem. How? Well, they’ll start off by taking the money and partying ’til they drop.
Happy Days Are Here Again, as the Democrats like to sing.
More likely it could be one of our Blue Northers of song and story. Well known (and feared) on the Texas plains—west and northwest of us here at the rancho—for many years. Their warnings once could be only a few hours at best, sometimes mere minutes. Bringing death to unsheltered livestock and, sometimes, people.
I wonder if we’ll get a rare snow? Freezing rain will be enough to start.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Coronado’s expedition, while exploring the newly discovered Llano Estacado in those days before the Pilgrims were even born, was camped in a ‘grand canyon’ when overtaken by a sudden storm that plunged the thermometer and battered them with fist-sized hailstones. Many doubted the account for centuries until some Spanish armor with huge dents turned up buried in Palo Duro Canyon a few years ago.
There definitely is some synchronicity between Israel and Texas. We are getting starting today a first sequence of rainy days since the “winter” started here. And a drop of temperature.
Well, Texas and Israel being on the same latitude line helps, I imagine, though since weather moves west to east you should get whatever strong blast we get sometime after us, not before.
As for Coronado, yes, I’d heard that story, and many others about ranchers losing whole herds to sudden plunges in temperature. Some rock lyrics refer to Blue Northers, though I can’t think of a song at the moment. Wish you’d find me a link for the dented-armor story. I know they found various things in the canyon years ago, including pieces of armor, iron crosses, lances and a rapier blade. According to the Panhandle-Plains Museum. Mrs. C. and I visited it before Mr. B. was born. Which reminds me we need to go back and take him with us.
Here’s one that makes mention of the hailstorm, along with one of my favorite topics of how we celebrated Thanksgiving in Texas more than 60 years before the Pilgrims.
http://www.myplainview.com/news/article_504f08a6-577f-11e3-b943-0019bb2963f4.html
Another Texas first, eh? I attended a Texana conference in Salado years ago in which a Mexican professor sniped at Thanksgiving, saying if the Pilgrams had just sailed a few hundred miles farther south and west, they could have journeyed to Mexico City and eaten at a fine restaurant and attended the opera. I thought he was being unnecessarily chauvinistic, but it was amusing.