A Little Snow With Extreme Cold Chilling Wichita Falls

A zoomed view from my kitchen window, about an hour after the sun arrived to do its daily illumination and heating duty, on the third Tuesday of the new year of 2025.

So far the sun isn't doing well with its heating duty today. Currently we are freezing way under 32 degrees this morning, at 15 degrees.

The temperature did not get above freezing yesterday. The same is predicted for today.

The heat pump seems to be working hard to warm up my interior space. 

I do not recollect being tired of Winter in years previous, so soon after the arrival of Winter, as I am currently.

As you can see via the zoomed view, a little snow dropped to Earth overnight. 

I do not think the outer world at my location has been rendered slippery due to that slight amount of snow. I think it will be the temperature which will keep me from any lengthy outdoor walking today...

Cold Saturday Walk To Wichita Falls Dry Falls & Hotel Remains

The predicted cold front blew in last night, with gusts wreaking havoc, once again, with my patio furniture.

Yesterday's balmy 70 degree plus day had me in t-shirt and shorts. Today's Saturday venture to Lucy Park, with a strong wind blowing and the temperature a few degrees above freezing, had me in fully insulated winter attire.

Today I fast walked on the Circle Trail, from Lucy Park to the currently dry falls of Wichita Falls. That is what you are seeing in the photo documentation, from a vantage point halfway to the top of the dry falls, looking across the Wichita River at the demolished remains of a long-abandoned hotel, of which only that pile of gray rubble remains.

Apparently for some reason Wichita Falls allowed a large hotel to be built on a known flood plain, as in, an area known to be prone to flooding. This hotel was built late in the previous century. At some point in time, in the current century, a disastrous flood damaged the hotel beyond being able to be repaired.

After a few years of haggling over ownership and who is responsible for the hotel, the City of Wichita Falls hired a demolition company to take down and remove the derelict hotel. The area will now be turned into parkland. Of what sort? I have not heard.

As for the dry falls of Wichita Falls. That I find perplexing. Wichita Falls is so named after a waterfall which was located slightly north of downtown Wichita Falls. This was not much of a waterfall, only falling a couple feet. A flood, way back in the late 1800s, turned the falls into what looks now like minor river rapids.

At some point in time, in the previous century, the Wichita Falls townsfolk tired of tourists asking where the Wichita Falls waterfall was located.

And so, an artificial Wichita Falls waterfall was created. This artificial waterfall flows from a cemetery, which one sees when hiking the trail to the top of the falls. Periodically the artificial Wichita Falls waterfall is turned off, turning it into the Wichita Falls Dry Falls.

One would think the design of this solution to the longstanding problem of not having a waterfall in Wichita Falls would have been such that the waterfall was always in waterfall mode, never in Dry Falls mode.

I came upon multiple fellow trail walkers today on the way, to and from Wichita Falls Dry Falls. I do not know if any of them were visiting tourists following the signage pointing them to the Wichita Falls waterfall, currently in Dry Falls mode...

One Semi-HOT Texas Day Before Way Below Freezing

Today's temperature in Wichita Falls, Texas, is currently forecast to reach a high of 73 degrees. Living in my old home zone of Western Washington, 73 degrees was considered to be a warm Summer day, borderline HOT.

I never experienced extreme temperature changes, happening fast, til I moved to Texas. 

I arrived in the Lone Star State late in the previous century, in the month of December. I arrived at my new abode in a drenching downpour, with the temperature seeming balmy, in the upper 70s.

About a week after my Texas arrival I ventured to the Fort Worth Stockyards, around noon, for lunch at the now long gone Riscky Rita's. My first experience with an all you can eat Mexican buffet. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt on that visit to the Stockyards, because the temperature seemed HOT to me.

At that point in time I was not yet paying attention to the Texas weather forecast, so, I did not know that a cold front was predicted to blow in, that day. The big blow began whilst I was pigging out at Riscky Rita's.

Upon exiting Riscky Rita's I was shocked to be struck by a strong wind, with the air chilled to what felt below freezing.

I made a run for my vehicle and high tailed it back to my abode in Haslet, a little burg at the far north end of Fort Worth.

That night an Ice Storm struck. My first time experiencing this type weather phenomenon. By morning the outer world was coated with a thick covering of ice, making any form of mobility, walking, biking, driving, difficult.

We did not know what to do, water system-wise, with the temperature nearing zero. We did not know how to shut off the water to the barn, or the pool, figuring such should be done to prevent freezing pipes. Eventually, with the help of the next door neighbor, we figured it out.

No ice is predicted to arrive with the incoming cold front. The rain predicted for this morning has not materialized.

Winter is only a couple weeks old and I am already ready for it to end and segue into Spring...
 

Mary Kelleher for Fort Worth City Council 5

Yesterday a Facebook notification showed up notifying me that something had changed...

A Page you follow, Elect Mary Kelleher, changed its name to Mary Kelleher for FW City Council 5

This was new news to me. I am assuming Mary Kelleher's current term on the Tarrant Regional Water District Board is coming to an end, and thus, now, Mary Kelleher is running to become a Fort Worth city councilwoman.

Ironically, well, maybe it is not ironic, more coincidental, but the same day I learned Mary is likely going to become a councilwoman, a Microsoft OneDrive Memory showed up which also reminded me of Mary Kelleher.

That is me you see above, on my way to D/FW International Airport, picking up an ostrich egg from Mary Kelleher's mailbox, on the way.

Switching from ostrich eggs back to the previous subject.

If my memory is serving me correctly, I first learned of Mary Kelleher, decades ago, via an article in Fort Worth Weekly, about Mary's issues regarding the Trinity River regularly flooding in her area of Fort Worth.

Prior to that, the entity who goes by the name Layla Caraway, who some know as Elsie Hotpepper, had been in the news---local, state and national, due to her home in Haltom City teetering precariously above a flooding creek.

Fort Worth's Congresswoman, Kay Granger, visited the site of Elsie Hotpepper's teetering home, causing Elsie to have some hope that maybe that local politician might be of some help. A hope history would prove to be erroneous.

This was all happening early on during the first decade of what has become an embarrassing Boondoggle, which has been Boondoggling along now for three decades, with little to show for what was purported to be a vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme.

The fact that no attention was being paid to actual vitally needed flood control, both in the flooding creeks in Haltom City, and the Trinity River in East Fort Worth, motivated both Elsie Hotpepper and Mary Kelleher to become what are known as political activists.

After reading about Mary's flood woes in that FW Weekly article, Elsie Hotpepper met with Mary, and convinced her to run for the TRWD Board.

I remember I was on a bike ride on the Trinity Trail when I got a call from Elsie Hotpepper, telling me about the meeting with Mary, and the hope Mary would run and win.

Mary did so, she ran and won. By a landslide.

I recollect my first time meeting Mary was when I went to vote at the Handley/Ederville polling location, where Mary was outside the polling location, greeting voters. I introduced myself.

It is sort of hard to believe this was such a long time ago, and, all these years later, the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision has yet to come to any sort of useful visible fruition. That and nothing much has been done to mitigate flooding in Tarrant County areas actually prone to deadly, serious flooding.

If I remember correctly, and sometimes I do, the last time I saw Mary and Elsie, in person*, was back in early 2016. Mary took Elsie and me out to lunch at an Outback Steakhouse, I think that was the location. 

And then after lunch we drove to Mary's farm where I met a large collection of animals, including an ostrich, one of whose eggs ended up getting picked up by me out of Mary's mailbox, a few days later.

Methinks it will greatly benefit Fort Worth having Mary Kelleher on the city council. And then, eventually, Fort Worth Mayor. Or Kay Granger's position. As a congresswoman...

*I was erroneous regarding Outback Steakhouse being the last time I have seen Elsie Hotpepper. I forgot about a year before COVID struck, I pedaled my bike to Sikes Lake to meet up with Elsie at a Sikes Lake gazebo.

Second New Year Tuesday With Clear Blue Cool Sky

Another clear blue-sky day, this second Tuesday of the New Year of 2024. It was back to Sikes Lake I ventured this morning, as you can clearly see via the view of the Blue Lagoon of Sikes Lake, located at the west end of the lake, viewed from the middle of the bridge across the Lagoon.

The temperature was in the mid 40s, with no wind, making for pleasant conditions.

Such will remain the case for a few days, eventually getting to a daytime high in the low 70s, before another cold blow arrives, dropping the temperature low into the mid-teens.

I prefer my temperatures to be in the 70s, not the mid-teens...

Snow-Free Sunday Wichita Bluff Hill Hiking

It was back for some snow-free salubrious high-speed hill hiking to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area this second Sunday of 2025, a fact you can intuit via the photo documentation looking east across the Circle Trail, at the picnic pavilion located at the summit of the Bluffs.

There were more than the norm number of fellow hill hikers, today. Methinks this is caused by the New Year Resolution phenomenon. That, and the fact that today is another clear blue-sky day, heated above freezing, being a pleasant change from the recent bout of deep freezing, along with snow.

I am amping up my physical activity in an attempt to melt away the excess poundage gained during the recent holiday season over-eating debauchery...

Blue Sky Saturday Playing Soccer While Hiking At Sikes Lake

On this second Saturday of the New Year of 2024, at my North Texas location, snow clouds have totally left the sky, leaving bright blue behind.

In shady areas, some snow remains, but, for the most part, the snow has melted into oblivion. No further such nonsense is in the near-term forecast, though there are a few days of such, predicted in the not so near-term forecast.

Judging by the number of people I saw today on my hike around Sikes Lake, I would have thought today was the first day of the New Year, with people out making good on their New Year's Resolution to get more exercise.

But, I think today's large number of people was likely due to the relief at the end of being housebound the past couple days. I know that is how I felt.

There was also some sort of soccer tournament going on today on the Sikes Lake soccer field. I saw three Fort Worth school buses which had transported soccer players to Wichita Falls. It seems a long way to go to play soccer on a field with no viewing stands, with soccer match viewers viewing from their perch on folding chairs on the sidelines.

I think of few things sounding more boring than watching a soccer game from field level with the temperature barely above freezing, with a strong wind blowing.

By some means snow had been removed from the soccer field's artificial grass, leaving a short wall of snow all around the perimeter of the field.

Is it considered normal to play soccer in Winter?

The temperature was in the 40s when I visited Sikes Lake today. As you can see via the photo documentation, a steady wind was making waves on the lake. That and making those 40 some degrees feel much colder...

Day Two of Wichita Falls Winter Wonderland

The temperature is currently one degree above freezing this morning of the second Friday of the New Year of 2024, with my North Texas, Wichita Falls location, still sporting a white dominated color scheme, slowly disappearing, as you can see via the view from my kitchen window.

When the sun began its daily illuminating duty this morning, I looked out my bedroom window to find myself surprised to see snowflakes still making their way to the ground.

The snow flaking has since abated, with patches of blue sky now appearing, with less than two hours to go til noon.

I have yet to make it to ground level. I suspect later today I shall do so. 

Ever since two winters ago, when I experienced a surprisingly sudden slip on ice, whilst walking at MSU (Midwestern State University), resulting in a semi-long recovery from a bruised butt and lower back, I have had an aversion to walking in any sort of winter wonderland.

The February of 2021 deep freeze disaster, with most of Texas losing the power of electricity, along with a lot of snow on the ground, making driving way too adventurous, I have had an aversion to driving in such conditions. 

Particularly after having such reinforced by last winter's incident where I found myself with tires spinning, unable to make it up an extremely slight grade connecting Taft Boulevard to Southwest Parkway. That time, other drivers kindly realizing my predicament, backed up far enough to allow me to back up to get a running start at getting up that slight slope. 

I made it to Walmart, that time, and then back to my abode, making that the last time I have driven in wintry conditions...

My Texas Location Has Turned Into A Snow Covered Winter Wonderland

This time the Texas weather predictors predicting snow got the prediction totally on target.

When the sun arrived this second Thursday of the new 2025 year, I looked out to the south, from my bedroom window, and saw big white flakes falling, with the ground painted white, and the usual multi-color landscape turned into a black and which color scheme.

Basically, a snow-covered Winter Wonderland.

We are now coming up on 9 in the morning, with the temperature two degrees below freezing, and snow still copiously falling.

Let's leave my bedroom to take a look to the north from my living room window.

 I do not think I will be leaving my abode this morning.

A doctor's appointment was re-scheduled yesterday due to anticipating this morning's likely travel challenges.

It seems so odd to me to go through my usual morning ritual of checking various online news sources, to get to my old home zone of Washington news sources, to see the temperature up north being way warmer than my currently frigid Southern location.

So far, the Texas power grid has had no problems, at my location, or anywhere else that I have heard of.

My interior space is comfortably toasty, for now...

New Look At Fort Worth's Multi-Decade Trinity River Vision Boondoggle

It has been a while since I have read an article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about America's Dumbest Boondoggle, also known as the Trinity River Central City Uptown Panther Island District Vision, or TRV for super short.

A couple days ago I found myself writing a blog post titled New Zealand Family's Seattle Visit Reminds Me Of Fort Worth's Infamous Trinity River Vision Boondoggle, written after seeing the result of a successful public works project completed in a more modern area of America, then finding myself comparing that project to what many simply refer to as The Boondoggle.

And then, ironically, the very day I posted the blog post referencing Fort Worth's embarrassing Trinity River Vision mess, the Star-Telegram publishes an article about the current state of The Boondoggle, in typical Star-Telegram faulty information fashion.

I suspect the reporter writing this article is new to Fort Worth, and the Star-Telegram, and thus does not have a well-developed ear for hearing nonsense.

We are now in the third decade of what has become America's Oldest Boondoggle. Over the years I have written dozens of posts about this subject. Just go to the Durango Texas blog and enter "TNT exploding ceremony" into the search function, or "Kay Granger Boondoggle" and you will come up with many of those posts about this subject.

Now, something I have not made mention of during the many years of writing these blog posts about America's Biggest Boondoggle.

Over the years I have been sent information from persons close to the problem. As in, someone with access inside J.D. Granger's inner Trinity River Vision operation. I referred to this person as Deep Moat. I was told a couple times, by a couple sources, that the TRWD and the TRV were annoyed, a time or two, by things they saw on my blog.

Also, regarding the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, someone working for that newspaper, anonymous to me, has long found my making fun of that newspaper to be amusing. And accurate. It has not happened for a couple years, but yesterday it did. That person, who they are, I do not know, sent me the link to this new article about The Boondoggle, a link I am not blocked from reading. I assume I would always have been able to read the Star-Telegram, if I was a subscriber, but I cancelled the hard copy long ago.

Anyway, I clicked the Fort Worth’s Panther Island riverfront project has seen years of delays. What’s next? and read it. And copied it.

I then messaged Elsie Hotpepper, asking if Elsie had read this latest, because her dear departed friend, Clyde Picht, is quoted. Elsie then asked for the link. I sent it. But, for her, she was blocked. I then sent Elsie the copied article.

Interesting that the Star-Telegram successfully blocks Elsie Hotpepper, but not me.

Anyway, let's now go through some of this article and comment as we read along. Let's begin with the first paragraph...

Government officials and curious citizens left no seats empty in Fort Worth’s city hall chamber on April 5, 2005. That day, then-Mayor Mike Moncrief locked horns with skeptical City Council members over the purpose and price of the “Trinity River Vision,” a grand plan to revamp the river’s flood control system and transform a sliver of the waterway twisting around downtown into a haven of urban leisure and recreation.

2005. Two decades ago. And that is years after The Boondoggle actually began. Flood control system? This project was originally touted as a vitally needed flood control and economic development scheme. So vitally needed, almost three decades later, little has been done. So vitally needed, the public was not asked to support it via a bond issue.

Moving on, the next paragraph...

Fort Worth’s powerful optimists first fleshed out plans for the venture the year before. Moncrief and fellow proponents hailed the undertaking, later rechristened Panther Island, as “the most significant local project since construction of Dallas/Fort Worth airport.” “Everyone feels the synergy of this project,” Moncrief told the audience in city hall, among them Panther Island champion U.S. Rep. Kay Granger. “They realize this will create a new gateway ... a new face for future generations.” Doubters weren’t sold on the mayor’s lofty aspirations. “I think the final cost of the project will be substantially higher” than the original $360 million price tag (around $613 million today), said council member Clyde Picht during the hearing.

The "later rechristened Panther Island" remark is what made me think this reporter is new to The Boondoggle. This pseudo public works project started out being called the Trinity River Vision. Then Uptown was added to the name. Then Central City. Then Panther Island District. I do not believe the project has ever been somehow rechristened as Panther Island. Such is just how some have come to refer to it, even though it is an imaginary island which no sane part of the world would refer to as such.

Moving on to the next paragraph...

The project’s budget ballooned to $1.17 billion around 2017 (a figure still listed in project documents today despite inflationary pressures). The most hopeful Panther Island advocates in the early 2000s expected a pocket of high-rises and tree-lined promenades to take form by the end of the decade. No development has happened since. The Tarrant Regional Water District has yet to acquire 23% of the land within Panther Island’s future boundaries; the body agreed in December to pay a real estate consulting firm $1 million to start thinking up a strategy for selling off land to interested developers.

Just the info contained in the above paragraph, one would think, is enough to make one think maybe it is time to just kill this embarrassing failure. The "no development has happened since" line is so telling. Basically, little real development has happened for almost three decades, not in the way developments happen in parts of the world known to be more, well, developed.

It gets worse. Next paragraph...

Much of the new flood control system has yet to be completed. TRWD and the other bodies tasked with bringing Panther Island’s renditions to life predicted in 2018 that every dam, channel and storage pond would be complete by 2028. The project’s latest completion date, as of June, is 2032.

Much of the flood control system is yet to be completed? Remember? This was originally touted as a vitally needed flood control project, to control floods in a section of the Trinity River which had not flooded for well over a half century due to levees installed in the 1950s. And now the completion date is in the next decade.

The final paragraph...

Past delays foreshadowed current ones. It took the Texas Department of Transportation roughly six years and $126.2 million to complete three bridges designed to funnel traffic to and from the island. Construction for the structures, totaling less than a mile in length, began in November 2015, with tentative completion dates set between 2017 and 2018. “This was a bad deal early on,” Picht said of Panther Island in 2018, a few years before he died. “It’s probably the worst managed public project in the state of Texas, if not the nation.” Where exactly do things stand today?

Why is the Star-Telegram blaming the Texas Department of Transportation for taking so long to build the simple little bridges? Did not the actual fault lie with the incompetent leadership of the TRV? As in, Kay Granger's son, J.D., made Executive Director, to motivate his mother to try and secure federal funds? J.D. Granger insisted the design of the bridges have these totally ordinary V-piers, which J.D. thought would make them Signature Bridges, which was part of the original Trinity River Vision, having Three Signature Bridges, matching the Dallas Trinity River Vision's proposed Three Signature Bridges, which was the actual start of The Boondoggle, Fort Worth once again trying to keep up with Dallas.

And failing.

Dallas did end up building two actual signature bridges, which add a cool looking element to the Dallas skyline.

As for The Boondoggle's employment of Kay Granger's son. Kay never did come up with federal funding. And when a Biden bill, the Infrastructure Bill, passed, sending funding to Fort Worth's un-funded project, Kay voted no. J.D. was then fired, given a $72,000 parting gift, and is now trying to open a restaurant.

Meanwhile, I have another nugget of news, sent to me anonymously, which I have no way of verifying, but which makes sense to me.

I have been told the real reason the Trinity River Vision project has stalled is due to serious engineering complications. When the Army Corps of Engineers was brought in, again, after those three little bridges were built over dry land, with a cement lined ditch to later be dug under them, an obvious issue became apparent.

As in, the cement lined ditch should have been built at the same time as the bridges. To dig under the bridges now presents serious engineering issues, as in without sufficient mitigations, digging under the bridges could cause a bridge collapse.

And so, the project is stalled, with the current funding now in limbo due to the project's ineptness, poor planning and bad design.

And, might I add. I have long predicted that eventually we will get to the point where it is realized the ground in the Panther Island zone is seriously contaminated, due to being a former industrial zone. There have already been some indications of this. I suspect it would take an EPA Superfund cleanup, which will likely never happen.

It is time for Fort Worth to kill this project, clean up the mess it has made, and get around to finally, at least, fixing Heritage Park, the boarded-up eyesore at the north end of downtown, a park celebrating Fort Worth's heritage, which, ironically, overlooks America's Biggest Boondoggle....