1 inch of Snowpocalypse

Wow, look at this - same street in August (during Harvey, that is) and yesterday. Yeah, I know it wasn't much snow, but this is Houston. We're not used to seeing snow at all.

When I was last heard from here, 24 hours or so ago, it was snowing, it was just about 32 degrees, and I was all worried about ice and whether we would be able to go to work. When I went to bed it was still snowing, lightly, and there was actually snow on the ground. The thing I was worried about was that there was water underneath that, presumably, because we'd had rain off and on for a couple of days. I figured if we got ice we were screwed. (I had pooh-poohed similar ideas from other people mere hours before that, but that was before the snow started - and continued for several hours.) But basically, my first reaction - the "it'll never stick" reaction - was closer to being right, because by the time I woke up late in the morning it was almost all gone. Any ice that had time to form melted real quick along with the snow.

It did make it look like actual winter, for a while, though - there was still snow on Rob's car when we went to work, and there was snow scattered around on the eaves of buildings. My work did not call a snow day, even though at least one of my co-workers tried to call in. (She was supposed to have been at work about the same time I went to bed, in all fairness.)

I think the snow did stick more somewhere up on the far side of Houston. (Here's pictures and video from Kyle Field, the A&M football stadium, which is only about an hour north of Houston. That looks like a more substantial amount of snow.)

As we were discussing in the comments of the last entry, I don't know if there are snowplows at all in Houston. Even a small snowfall that sticks to the ground is like a once-a-decade thing down here. Probably less than that, even.

Officially I saw 0.7 inches for the snowfall. Right now it's below freezing and I think will be enough to constitute a hard freeze (which we don't even get every winter) but luckily the snow was apparently the end of the wet part of the cold snap. The roads were dry coming home tonight.

We are so spoiled. I was worried I might have to put on socks, which I hate. I do have a decent coat, but I suspect that there are people who don't, and not necessarily just because they can't afford one, either. You just rarely need one - I'm not sure I put my quilted coat on at all last winter.

I'm pretty sure that when I was younger we had more cold weather than we do now, although still not a lot. Global warming is real, as if most of us really doubted that.

Holiday stuff

 The town holiday parade is tonight. We usually go out to eat on Saturday nights, but we went yesterday instead (on the way home from work) because we knew to go out tonight would be a mess. There's no way out of our neighborhood without running into it.

Rob said, "They act like this is the Macy's parade," and I laughed. People who've always lived here are very fond of this parade, it's true. It's just a little dinky parade, but they come out and score their spots on the sidewalk hours ahead. The first year we lived here, we went and watched it, and we enjoyed it, it's really cute - but I haven't had any desire to go again. I think if I had more ties to the people here, that's what would make it different, but I'm kind of a hermit, let's face it.

So we're just staying home tonight. Rob's watching Fury, that Brad Pitt movie about the tank, and I'm half-watching and fiddling around on the computer. (It was near the end when I walked in, or I'm sure I would have gotten more into it. We saw it in the theater and I liked it a lot, although it's pretty depressing.) Tomorrow we think we're going to see "Coco," and Monday we're both off so we thought we might go to the mall and goof around. I don't like to go when it's crowded, but it ought to be alright on a Monday.

I'm going to go see my sister the Monday after that, in San Antonio, and we're going to go over to Austin and go to the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar. I went once with our mom, years and years ago - I guess when I still lived in Austin, which means it was in the early 80s. I imagine it's changed a bit since then. And I haven't seen my sister in ages, either - I guess we're both kind of hermit-ish. We talk back and forth but hardly ever get around to visiting. So I'm sure I'll have more to say about that later. I'm off work the entire two weeks before and after Christmas, which is going to be kind of weird. I haven't had that much time off all at once in years. (It'll go by like a flash, of course.)