I Love Spring!

Today, it was a very warm day here in Texas. It was about 76 degrees F (or 24 degrees C). Back home where I am from in Canada, it was 54F (or 12 degrees C). Not a bad day for Toronto, but I love the warmth here.

Back up north, spring wasn't officially well underway until late March or Early April. Sometimes it was not even feeling like spring until May. Here it is already in full swing. The grass is turning green again, flowers are showing up in gardens, some trees have begun to bud. Life is returning to the plants and it puts a great smell in the air that is not present during the winter.

People were coming in all day at work commenting on how great it felt outside. Contractors can finally start to get some work done and it is putting them in better moods. This is good because I have to deal with them all day.

I am hoping the spring has some good storms hiding in it this year as last year, the spring was lacking in interesting weather. It cam for a few days at the end of the spring, including a big hailstorm, but that was all, and the summer was HOT.

This weekend, the clocks go ahead an hour, which means I lose an hour of my weekend. Sucks, but at least the sun will be setting after 7:30pm once again. The only thing I am not looking forward to right now is I am going to have to cut the grass this weekend. Ah well.

Spring has finally arrived?

Finally, after an unusually harsh winter for North Texas, it looks like the cold and snow has finally ended for this season. With spring officially only a couple of weeks away, we have started with much warmer temperatures and the long range keeps us in the warmer trend.

I have a feeling the grass and trees will spring back to life fairly quickly since I think they have been waiting for this weather.

Business is picking up at work also, very suddenly, with more and more people wanting to get out and do some spring work. The beginning of March is what our store terms the "100 days of hell". This means that spring is the busiest time of the year for us, and for the next 100 days, we will go through a LOT more selling, restocking, cleaning, moving things around, than we do at any other time of the year. Working in a hardware store, spring is big business.

I am glad spring is really starting to come in now, as I was getting tired of the cold. Now I am really looking forward to the beginning of the storm season here in the southern plains of the USA. I love a good thunderstorm. hopefully with my new work schedule, with only working till 2pm, I will get off work before most of the "fun" weather starts up in the day. Time will tell, but if we get anything interesting, or drastic, I will be sure to report on it here.

Taste of Spring, then Winter continues...

This has been a very unusual winter for us here in North Central Texas. It has been colder, and more snow than any winter in recent memory for this region. I have been here for almost 4 years so far and I can already tell this is not a normal pattern.

This evening, we have a bit of a taste of spring coming in the form of thunderstorms. This is the kind of weather I love to experience. It's entertaining and fun to watch the progression of the storms here in Texas. This is my passion for weather. Normal rain is boring to me, unless it is very heavy, or you add some lightning and thunder.

After this event this evening, it will be cooler again and by Tuesday, we have yet another risk of accumulating snows. It is a very good chance this time from a few days ahead, which is not normal since it is very tricky to predict snow in this area. A difference of a few miles could mean a couple of inches or not one flake of snow. We are border lined with the precipitation.

It will probably be a much lighter dusting of snow this time around compared to the several inches we got a week ago, but in this area of Texas, we normally get 1 snowfall per winter, and this one will make it 4 times, all spread out from Christmas Eve, to late February. We are all hoping this will be it, because spring is so close, but maybe this is indicating a cooler spring ahead, who knows?

The weather service has already issued a special statement to prepare people for what is coming. 2 inches of snow here in Texas, is like 10 inches in the northern states. It can shut things down very easily. We will have to wait and see what happens in the next couple of days. I will report back here with the way it all unfolds. Stay tuned!