January 16, 2007

"It's snowing," says Chris. He's in Austin, Texas.

I exhort him to take some photographs. Note the window sticker (not really) proving the car is indeed in Texas.

Snow in Austin

The door handle wants to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex:

Snow in Austin

Here's some local news coverage, showing kids figuring out how to sled.

18 comments:

JorgXMcKie said...

And 'global climate change' has evidently killed 75% of the California citrus crop. Guess the trees must have roasted or something.

bill said...

Learning to sled--not so hard. Doesn't take much, just need a steep hill covered with pine needles and a section of cardboard box. It was 70 the other day and my daughter and I enjoyed a fine afternoon of sledding. Real snow would be appreciated but we work with what we have.

Revenant said...

"Global climate change" is one of my favorite weasel phrases -- as if the climate was ever static and unchanging.

vbspurs said...

And 'global climate change' has evidently killed 75% of the California citrus crop. Guess the trees must have roasted or something.

Buy Florida Orange Juice!!

P.S.: Chris, the second T-Rex icicle photo is MAGNIFICENT. You could sell that as a poster.

Cheers,
Victoria

Anonymous said...

I was checking world temperatures yesterday for some reason and saw that Los Angeles was at 35 degrees and Moscow, Russia was at 36. Granted, it was 5 AM in LA and 1 PM in Moscow, but still...

Up until yetserday our area was running 20 degrees above normal. Nothing like a 50 degree January to lower my heating bill, the price of fuel oil and gasoline.

Why is it I am supposed to be AGAINST global warming again?

Anonymous said...

After having lived in Boston and moving here to Austin I'd agree with JimNTexas that it's a bit ridiculous how this town reacts to ice. (This is hardly snow.)

It would be nice, however, if the city could do a better job of sanding the overpasses. They sand the inclines on either side of the overpasses, but not the overpasses themselves - which makes absolutely no sense to me.

The University of Texas has shut down for tomorrow (Wednesday) also, but I'll be going in once the wrecks are cleared from rush hour.

Anonymous said...

San Antonio's pretty cold, too. We have a sleet and rain mix going on right now, and our town is pretty much shut down as well.

Ice storms around here aren't that common, and snow's even rarer (the last significant snowfall was in 1988). We're just not used to frigid weather on a regular basis, so we don't have the equipment or collective know-how to deal with the ice and snow. Please forgive us as we huddle up at the first sign of real winter.

Maxine Weiss said...

But, can you "exhort" him to resume the blog?

Peace, Maxine

Bruce Hayden said...

I lived in Austin for five years in the 1990s, and we had a similar occurance. I remember driving into work, and finding that I was the only one in the building.

Ann should be sympathetic to this - one of the reasons that it was so easy to get into work that snow day in Austin was that I was driving an Audi Quattro, one of the few then in Austin. I should add that I registered my 6th Quattro today.

This time of year, I spend mostly in a ski community, where snow days are almost unheard of (Though I have managed to ski through the last couple of blizzards that have hit Denver). We probably have 75-100 days a year here that have more snow on the roads than Austin does when it shuts down for snow, and we just drive on it.

Mr. Forward said...

Number One rule for sledding in Texas?
"No Spurs".

AllenS said...

Chris:

Let me give you some good advice, DO NOT put your tongue on the door handle. Trust me on this.

Anonymous said...

No, it's really not ridiculous how Austin shuts down in icy weather. Since this weather is so rare, Austin hasn't had to invest in the infrastructure that makes icy roads safe: snowplows, de-icers, and even tire chains. Since we have icy roads maybe once a year, the strategy works pretty well!

MadisonMan said...

Albatross, I am visiting your fair city, at a convention, and am somewhere between astonished, amused and depressed at the reaction. I wanted to see the Alamo. Closed. Take a tour? Closed. I try to remember when weather closed attractions down in Madison. I fail. I wasn't around for the big ice storm in Madison in '76 -- maybe things closed down then.

The senora taking my coffee for money this morning had an iced-over windshield. I told her I left my scraper back in Wisconsin. I'm glad it didn't snow here -- my boots are still in Madison as well.

There are a lot of commenters here who don't know the difference between weather and climate.

MadisonMan said...

That video from Austin, by the way, is just great. Boy are those kids having fun. I remember spending all day sledding as a teen. Excellent.

Laura Reynolds said...

Lets stop using "normal", average is the right word. Normally its hardly ever the average temperature on a given day. So its quite normal to be above or below average.

Kev said...

,,,what Clay Spinuzzi said. With the exception of the Panhandle, most of Texas doesn't get enough winter weather to make it anywhere near cost-effective to have thing like snowplows sitting around idle for most of the year.

But it has been a crazy winter here so far. In Dallas, we had all our ice and freezing rain over the weekend (I was lucky enough to be able to fly back from NYC--where it was warmer than here--on Sunday without incident), and it was Austin and San Antonio that were getting pelted yesterday. The same was forecast for today...except it stayed farther north, and most of us in D/FW woke up to a snow day today. I guess that tacks an extra day onto the end of the public school year now.

vbspurs said...

My new wallpaper.

Cheers,
Victoria

Anonymous said...

There are a lot of commenters here who don't know the difference between weather and climate.


Well, just for the record, how many days of weather do I need before it becomes climate? 30? 200?

How can we divorce weather from climate? Or is it just any weather that runs contrary to the Global Warming Gospel that is simply weather, and not climate?