Prior to moving to Texas from the moderate climate of the Western Washington zone of the Pacific Northwest this was not the type headline I thought possible in the Dallas/Fort Worth part of Texas.
I was to learn my pre-conception about D/FW's weather was erroneous soon upon arrival in the little hamlet of Haslet, at the far north end of Fort Worth.
I had left Washington six days prior, with rain falling heavily til I crossed the Cascades into Eastern Washington.
When I arrived at my new location in Haslet I was appalled to find rain falling harder than I had ever experienced in Washington, with flooding seeming to be inundating the landscape everywhere I looked.
About a week later I was in the Fort Worth Stockyards, at the now defunct Riscky Rita's all you can eat Mexican food lunch buffet. When I arrived at the Stockyards, and entered Riscky Rita's, the temperature was pleasantly in the 70s.
When I had had my fill of Riscky Rita's Tex-Mex I was shocked upon exiting to the outer world to discover the temperature had dropped a lot of degrees, with a strong wind blowing making it feel even colder.
This was my introduction to the concept of the Wind Chill Factor.
I remember running to get to my vehicle to escape the cold.
That night the temperature dropped to 15 degrees. We did not know how to turn off the water to the barn and the pool. We did not know what we needed to do, other than keep faucets dripping.
By morning my introduction to the Ice Storm concept had arrived, coating everything, including the two cows in the pasture, with a layer of ice.
I was mortified that I'd somehow gone from the Banana Belt climate of the Skagit Valley to what now seemed to me to be what living in Alaska must be like.
And then a few short days later the temperature returned to being in the 70s, which was my introduction to the Texas weather concept of extreme weather changes within short time frames.
Which brings me to the present, February 28, 2015. Once again rendered immobile by a coating of slippery ice covering much of North Texas.
I won't be going to Town Talk today....
