When Will They Ever Learn...

It's drought season in Texas again. We had a bad one the year I moved here and the first summer coupled record heat with record fires. We smelled a lot of smoke because a lot of grassland gets set off quite easily when it is dry. The last three years have been reasonably wet. This year is another dry one.

Our rainfall for the year-to-date is about 50% below what we've usually got. So far we're roughly 4.5 inches below what typically falls in the first four months of the year. It ain't rocket science to know that means dry.

For the last week or so we've had some serious wind blowing. A couple of days gave us 25-35 MPH averages with gusts to fifty or more. Dry land with wind blowing across it means drier still.

So, what does Bubba do to modify his behavior? Not a bloody thing. The state was made for him to throw his beer cans, McDonald's bags and cigarette butts out the pick-up truck window.

Which leads to:

Serious Fires Rage in Much of State

If you've got a 100,000 acres burning in several places, that's a lot of fire. But lest you feel the need to send a barrel of water for me to throw upon my house to protect it let me say that "Texas is burning from border to border" is a gross exaggeration. Texas is a whole lot bigger apparently than the folks in the UK who write headlines seem to understand.

And, while Possum Kingdom Lake is to the west of Ft. Worth and suffering some severe damage, it is about 70 miles away so the likelihood of the DFW metro area experiencing a Mrs. O'Leary's cow event is quite low.

Forecasts are for some rain  tomorrow and through the week-end so things should quiet down and maybe Bubba will roll his truck windows up and shove his cigarette butts up his...well, you get the idea.