When it rains in San Antonio, it pours and pours and pours.  Thunderstorms down here are rarely severe, but they dump a lot of rain.  The ground here isn’t the porous dirt I’m used to in Nebraska… instead it’s hard rock.  That means when it pours it doesn’t soak in and it flows.  This past weekend, the water of the entire neighborhood flowed right into our driveway.

Here I am trying to get the water out of the driveway and rescue the dog beds:

I walked outside to that, after I looked out our door to see this:

At about five seconds, you’ll see a floating dog bed.  One of our dogs was already inside and I asked Stunning where the other dog was.  She realized she was still outside (we didn’t know the driveway looked like this yet) so she walked to the door to let her in.  Realized there was half a foot of water on the driveway and looked down to the see the dog (she’s 18 years old) laying on the nearly floating bed with just her head out of the water.  Well at that point we couldn’t open the door, because the water would have rushed it (it already was coming through the cracks) so we had to go rescue her through the other door.  In the end, she was fine.

This was the water after it left our driveway:

A river runs through it.  This will happen again… just one of the joys of living in Texas… and considering I used to be a weatherman, I’m being serious.

Well, National Weatherperson Appreciation Day came and went last week and I wasn’t appreciated very much.  It’s fine though, because I’m no longer a weatherperson.  However, as I stated on that day (February 5) once a meteorologist, always a meteorologist at heart.  (Although when people ask me the forecast with the idea that I know all forecasts and weather conditions at all times, I tell them that I have retired.)

I do want to honor those people who still make a career out of the weather.  It’s an amazing thing to do.  In fact, I wanted to be a weatherman as early as the fifth grade.  I decided then that it is what I want to do and over the years it never changed.  Once I got to experience the hours and pay though, I decided I would do something else.  (It’s been a great change though, thanks to my current employer who is amazing!) 

However, being a meteorologist is not the easiest thing to do.  The hours are always strange and for the most part they are always changing.  You have to experience some terrible jokes on an almost daily basis:

“Wow… weather guy… must be nice to have a job where you can be wrong all the time and still get paid.”

Real original!!  In fact, I haven’t heard that joke since yesterday.

For the fact that meteorologists across the United States have to experience that joke at all times, I must give them my honest appreciation. 

I appreciate you, Mr. Making Forecasts All the Time Guy.

While the East Coast was dealing with what has affectionately become known as the “Blizzard of 2010” or as President Obama was reported to have called it, “Snowmageddon”, I was hanging outside in San Antonio, Texas.  We just moved to Texas from Omaha, Nebraska in May.  It’s been quite the change of scenery, especially this winter.  While Omaha or the East Coast dealt with multiple snowstorms, we dealt with the coldest temperature of 16 degrees, which people here freaked out about.

This post is not about bragging or making you jealous.  Instead, I have a message for you.  Spring has sprung in San Antonio.  That means Spring is moving north and making its advance across the United States.  It means, Spring is coming for you.  I give you the indications of Spring in San Antonio:

Have faith people of the north… Spring is coming and you’ll get it soon.

We just moved to south Texas in May.  When we got here, San Antonio proceeded to have the hottest summer in the history of the city.  Global Warming!!!  There were almost 60 days with temperatures hitting 100 degrees or hotter and we only saw 1.48” of rain in June, July, and August.

Then the seasons turned and it became fall, which in turn, like every year, led to winter.  Of course, now that we’re in winter, it’s become one of the coldest winters in San Antonio history.  It got down to 16 degrees the other night. 

When I woke up for my pre-dawn urination sleep-break, I stumbled into the rest room and flushed the toilet.. and it did not fill back up correctly.  Then I turned the faucet on and nothing came out of it.  Blasted… the cold night had frozen a pipe.  This was around 4:45am, so I go into a sort of panic mode and try to figure out what to do.  Just like any emergency situation, I immediately sat down and searched Google.  “Frozen pipes” and “How do I tell where my pipes are frozen?” and “How to thaw pipes” and Google responded with a whole bunch of instructions that I didn’t quite know what to do with.

Stunning woke up and freaked out herself.  She was throwing a baby shower that day and with no water the whole “Can I just get a glass of water?” request from guests would be difficult… as would the “Where’s your bathroom?”  (I thought it would be cool if she handed the guest a roll of toilet paper and then proceeded to tell them how to get to the corner of the yard, but she wasn’t pleased with that idea.)

Having a frozen pipe is one thing… all you have to do is thaw it.  However, when you thaw it, you know you have a problem when you see water coming from a large gaping crack in the pipe.  Yep, that happened to us too.  We weren’t the only ones dealing with this, so the plumbers were expensive and took a long time to get to us. 

We left the water on during the baby shower with a good amount of duct tape surrounding the crack to try and slow the water down some.  The duct tape didn’t work very well, but at least we had running water (as mentioned it never actually stopped running for fear it would cause greater pressure on the cracked pipe) for the 25 females that arrived at the house.

Coming from Omaha, frozen pipes aren’t something you really deal with often.  In Omaha, they prepare for cold weather by burying things.  I guess in San Antonio, builders don’t realize that it can get cold.  Shame on them.  Anyway, the pipe is fixed and now I leave my faucets with a steady drip when I go to bed.

I used to be a weatherman.  Ya… one of the guys on television that talk a whole bunch about the future.  I was a psychic in that I got paid to tell the future.  I like to think I was slightly more accurate and informational than modern-day psychics.  Some days I was… and some days I wasn’t. 

Anyway, after Stunning graduated from law school, we moved to San Antonio.  She can’t stand cold weather, so we really picked the right year to move.  While people here in San Antonio actually went crazy at the prospect of a low temperature of 16 and a high of 34, people in Omaha have dealt with blinding winds, days where the temp doesn’t get above 0, mornings at 20 below, feet of snow.  It’s been crazy.  My dad took these pictures of the snow in his front yard:

Notice the snow drift on the left is taller than the flight of stairs.

My dad is about 6 foot tall.  The snow drift on the right is taller than he is.

Not sure this weather would qualify as a winter wonderland.

This is a similar view before all of this calamity..

…slight difference…