Snow is such a rarity in north Texas....and a White Christmas has never officially been documented since records started being kept in the late 1800's - until now. 2009 draws to a close with two, yes two ! Texas snowfalls in the month of December, one the very first week of the month, and the most recent one falling on Christmas Eve. It was such an unusual, exciting event, people felt they just had to get out and dance in it !
The snow started falling in the morning, but did not stick to anything for hours, because it had been sunny and in the 70's the day before. That's Texas weather for you. By mid-afternoon the ground temps had cooled enough that the snow, still falling (and not, I must add, our normal ice pellets which pass for snow around here, either, but real fluffy flakes of it) finally began to accumulate. Frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers attacked the mall in a frenzy. Traffic all over the
DFW metroplex slowed to a snarl as highway overpasses began to slick over. (Sand trucks ? Snow plows? No one knows what those things are around here; we are the only people we know who even own a snow shovel- and we brought it with us from Va. They don't sell those things south of the Mason-Dixon line.) Fortunately
hubster, who had just returned from visiting relatives during the Great East Coast Blizzard of '09, managed to fly in before the Texas snowstorm hit, and just narrowly avoiding being stranded on a plane or in an airport somewhere else and missing Christmas.
It was an unusual, welcome, beautiful Christmas present. Many churches started canceling their Christmas eve services, worried about folk driving in the weather as the sun went down and road conditions grew worse. Our little family carried on, easily making it to church but by the time the service was over, the drifts made it impossible to see where the road ended and the curbs began. We made it home safely, just in time for our family feast. My sons are getting to that age where they'd rather play video games than slide down the hill in the nearby park on giant
pieces of cardboard ( what passes for sleds around these parts), and that saddens me, a little.
Snow is such a rarity in north Texas....and a White Christmas has never officially been documented since records started being kept in the late 1800's - until now. 2009 draws to a close with two, yes two ! Texas snowfalls in the month of December, one the very first week of the month, and the most recent one falling on Christmas Eve. It was such an unusual, exciting event, people felt they just had to get out and dance in it !
The snow started falling in the morning, but did not stick to anything for hours, because it had been sunny and in the 70's the day before. That's Texas weather for you. By mid-afternoon the ground temps had cooled enough that the snow, still falling (and not, I must add, our normal ice pellets which pass for snow around here, either, but real fluffy flakes of it) finally began to accumulate. Frantic last-minute Christmas shoppers attacked the mall in a frenzy. Traffic all over the DFW metroplex slowed to a snarl as highway overpasses began to slick over. (Sand trucks ? Snow plows? No one knows what those things are around here; we are the only people we know who even own a snow shovel- and we brought it with us from Va. They don't sell those things south of the Mason-Dixon line.) Fortunately hubster, who had just returned from visiting relatives during the Great East Coast Blizzard of '09, managed to fly in before the Texas snowstorm hit, and just narrowly avoiding being stranded on a plane or in an airport somewhere else and missing Christmas.
It was an unusual, welcome, beautiful Christmas present. Many churches started canceling their Christmas eve services, worried about folk driving in the weather as the sun went down and road conditions grew worse. Our little family carried on, easily making it to church but by the time the service was over, the drifts made it impossible to see where the road ended and the curbs began. We made it home safely, just in time for our family feast. My sons are getting to that age where they'd rather play video games than slide down the hill in the nearby park on giant pieces of cardboard ( what passes for sleds around these parts), and that saddens me, a little.
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