Its always been hot in Texas...except Lubbock in January
It's supposed to be hot!
Right now it's 6:28 pm and I'm showing 106? with a heat index of 116?.
That's about how it was in June of 1957 when I enlisted in the USAF and was sent to San Antonio for basic training from somewhat cooler Minnesota. It was an all night, 5 or 6 leg Brannif flight and when they opened the door at San Antonio in the morning, what a shock. It was HOT. So this is Texas, it wasn't anything like I thought, there were no cowboys or long horn cattle anywhere in sight. Just a mean looking sergeant from Lackland.
I didn't know the ground could get so hard and things so dry and of course no air conditioning. In those days the service still provided its own mess hall slaves, i.e., new recruits, so part of that initial training was a 2 am roll out for mess hall duty for 18 hours which went on for a week. It was still hot at just past mid night. At least in Minnesota it cooled off at night, but not in Texas. I remember pealing a potato that week, among hundreds of other potatoes, but this one seemed so light, like it had not density. And then I saw the hole and out came a huge roach. He had eaten out the inside and was living there like in a cave.
Rain, what's that? Oh, its the stuff that comes out of the sky and when it does there's a big flood to replace the drought because it won't stop for days. Suddenly, that very hard dirt becomes mud, lots of it. That year went from a drought to hurricane or tropical storm - it was so wet, you couldn't dry after a shower 'cause the towel was wet. Hurricanes absolutely make everything wet, again no AC. Rain doesn't fall out of the sky in a hurricane, it comes from no where side ways.
Texas weather is as extreme as anywhere on the planet. Tornadoes, snow storms, dust storms, hurricanes, huge thunderstorms, and drought. Drought is the worst 'cause stuff dies for lack of water. And then there's northwest Texas in January.
As hot as San Antonio was that summer, it was bitter cold three years later in Lubbock at Reese for T-bird flight training. I mean like there were mornings before the sun came up and first launch when it was below zero. And wind, always a wind. The training was deficient because we never learned to land in a calm wind, always cross wind.
I once saw a spider on a country road in Texas. It was least 6 inches tall and a foot wide with long hairy legs. That's the reason I won't live in Texas no more - the weather I could deal with but not big spiders.
Texas' drought will end, at least it always has in the past, but this one is bad. I feel for the country folk, there isn't enough water and feed to keep livestock alive so ranchers are selling. It isn't good. In fact nothing is good today, the market really took a dive.
