Category Archives: Weather/Climate

Catalina 22

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The family sloop, a 1985 Catalina 22, looks better in this photo than it did up close, at the time, as it was covered with grey mold spots after a year without use on Lake Travis. During the drought the docks were moved to where they were inaccessible most of the time. Now it’s back and almost four weeks since the photo was taken, the exterior is three-quarters clean. Elbow grease and Sof Scrub is all it takes. Still have to finish the cockpit and clean out the cabin, but it’s coming along. The admiral wants to sell it and I had planned to, while it was inaccessible, but of course nobody wanted to buy it then. But after 22 years of sailing it, it’s hard to part. Has to be cleaned and the outboard overhauled to sell it, anyway. If I can lure Mr. B. onto it a couple of times once school is out on May 24, I may have the winningest reason to keep it. Racing is something I’ve never cared to do, but he might find it exciting.

Almost a full lake

According to the Lower Colorado River Authority, which keeps track of such things, Lake Travis now stands at 673 feet above mean sea level. That’s eight feet below full, which is not normal for this time of year. What is normal for this time of year is big rains in the lake’s watershed. Some homeowners out there could go from vanished lake to flooding in a span of six months.

Our wet month

May is fixin’ to live up to her name. Some big storms that have been edging closer all week are due to poke their noses into our atmosphere by this evening, possibly strong, possibly bringing heavy rain. Tonight through Thursday night. Figures. I finished the backyard yesterday. Nothing makes St. Augustine grow fast like a big rain.

UPDATE  Line of storms–stretching from Georgetown to San Antonio–is moving in at 10:45 p.m. An hour later, the rain had moved on and the rancho had a mere tenth of an inch. Ho hum.

Where goes the sun?

 Cloudy, drizzly day at the rancho. After a week of rain, LCRA’s Bob Rose is expecting still more:

"The pattern so far this spring has been nothing short of amazing, with a parade of storm systems marching from southern California to Texas, with almost every one producing rain and thunderstorms over parts of Texas."

May is normally our wettest month. If it keeps raining, we could have big floods by June.

Record snowfall

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December 25, 2004’s record snow in Texas of anywhere from two to six inches, including the most snow in Brownsville in 109 years. We have pix of Mr. B. romping in it at the rancho. I think that might be Lake Travis, the dark spot in the white, top left. Satellite view, courtesy of NASA’s Visible Earth. 

Rain go away

The Fat Guy is bemoaning the "shaggy" grass on his .55 acre, thanks to all the rain north and south central Texas has had in the past four days. He’s also suffering sun-deprivation. Indeed. The grass at the too-dark rancho also is threatening to need mowing soon. Rainwise, after a wet April with 3.71 inches at the airport, we got almost two inches more by midnight yesterday. So we’ve had about 19.5 inches for the year so far–which is more than half of the rain what we normally get in one year. On the other hand, it rained all night at the rancho, and those stats aren’t in yet. You could look it up, here.

Bow echo

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Two bow echoes sweeping Central Texas from the west, the lower one dead west of Austin. Must admit I never heard of these things before, but they are not good, according to the weather service which produced the graphic as part of its mesoscale discussion on current conditions. "…downbursts from long-lived intense bow echoes called derechos (Hinrichs 1888) account for the majority of casualties and damage resulting from convectively induced nontornadic winds in the United States."

UPDATE  Good education, but no serious winds at the rancho, some hail north at Georgetown, and lots of rain in the western hills. Which should bring the lakes up again. The storms have moved southeast, for the most part, now at a few minutes after 11 p.m..