Hiking Along A Gateway Park Trinity River Cliff While Not Thinking Of Having A White Christmas

This next to last Wednesday of 2013 has been a slightly balmy, very windy, two days til the end of Fall kind of day today at my location in North Texas.

The temperature got into record breaking zone, yesterday, heating up to nearly 80. This morning, when the sun arrived, the temperature, according to my computer based weather monitoring device, was 67.

Since the average temperature the past 24 hours was well over 50 degrees I figured the pool would not be too cool this morning, and thus swimmable.

I figured wrong.

In the noon time frame, of this windy Wednesday, I opted to go hiking in Gateway Park, hiking the trail I found a couple weeks ago that seemed to treacherous to pedal on my bike, what with the trail being on the edge of a cliff that ended in the Trinity River. You can see part of this cliff trail in the above photo, along with the treacherous green Trinity River.

I  did not have to dodge too many falling branches whilst hiking Gateway Park today. Apparently today's wind is delivering yet one more Arctic Blast of extreme cold to this usually somewhat reliably warm part of the planet.

As you can see, via some of the data I get from my computer based weather monitoring device,  in addition to the WIND ADVISORY, which is accurate, I am also being told the sun is being sunny, which is not accurate. I do believe that 76 degree temperature is accurate. As is the forecast of a plummet in temperature to being barely above freezing before this day is done.

If the forecast is to believed, ignoring today's inaccuracies, the next several days are going to be chilly, including Christmas.

A couple years back we had a very White Christmas at my location in Texas.

In all my years of living in Washington I think I can only remember one White Christmas. In Texas I think I've experienced 2 or 3 White Christmases.

When I moved to Texas I did not think something like a White Christmas was possible, let alone an Ice Storm, which I experienced within a week of arriving in Texas. I never experienced an Ice Storm in Washington.

In Washington, though, I recollect only one White Christmas at my location in the lowlands of Puget Sound. One can always have oneself a White Western Washington Christmas by driving a few miles east til one gets high enough in the Cascade Mountains to be in the snow zone. I don't know how many miles, or in what direction one would have to drive in Texas to be high enough to be in a mountainous snow zone.