Hi Readers,
Cold!! We’ve been waiting for this day all year it seems. In celebration of the cold snap that just arrived (still arriving?) last night, here are a few photos sandwiched by some video. I get cold just looking at ’em.
Cold fronts aren’t novelty where we live; we can expect one in December and another in January. Just a few miles from the Gulf Coast of Texas, warm air generally keeps it pretty temperate here, even as our Texas neighbors to the north are getting pounded by snow and ice. Sometimes, it gets cold enough to tamp down next year’s mosquito population, but usually not.
Y’all stay warm. I’m headed to a community garden next .. it’s 39 degrees and windy. Putting on the ear muffs!
~ Shannon @ DirtNKids
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Soothing Ice Sounds (Video!)
11-mile Reservoir, Colorado
Snowflake Tasting
Yellowstone National Park
Hike Up To Warmth
100-yr Blizzard 2018
Big Bend National Park
Snowman and Casa Grande
Big Bend National Park
Mexican Jay
Big Bend National Park
Snow Trudging
Mueller State Park, Colorado
Weird Driveway Ice Patterns
Deep Freeze Houston (21 degrees!) 2018
The Great Houston Snow of 2009
RIP Rosco The Snowman, Mexican Palms
Walking a Frozen Lake
11-mile Reservoir, Colorado
Penguin Slide Fail (Video!)
DirtNKids Blog 
Neither sleet nor snow came to Austin this week, but the bare bit of overnight freeze was enough for frostweed plants to perform their ice trick earlier in the season than is typical.
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Yay! I saw that. I wish I knew where to look for it here. It’s quite the phenomenon. I’ll link your photo here for all to see:
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Glad you are finally cooling off, Shannon. I enjoyed the wintry impressions in your photos and videos, even recognized some places! 😊
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I knew you would, Tanja! At 11-mile reservoir, it was the first time we’d seen the lake entirely frozen over. Here’s a picture of my kids with a fisherman walking with his sled across the lake in the distance. It looks like two stacked photos .. it’s not. Did you watch the last video? We got a good laugh out of it.
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Nice photos, Shannon. The first photo DID look stacked. The lakeshore perfectly bisects it. I don’t think I have ever walked on the reservoir (on water or on ice), and I have NOT tried a penguin slide. 🙂
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Several years ago, one very very cold day, I walked up to our front porch and noticed something unusual about two jugs of water there — one was frozen solid, the other crystal clear. I jostled the clear jug, immediately a single tiny crystal appeared about 1/3rd of the way down. The crystal went fractal and within 10 seconds the entire jug froze solid. 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Oh my gosh! That is so cool. I’ve only heard of this phenomenon; it must be something to witness it. Of course, you get much more cold up there than we do down here in Zone 9B.
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Believe it or not, we just had a half-hour of sleet, graupel, and snow. It wasn’t much, but I still can see the buildup on my balcony railing. It’s slowed down now, but as it certainly was fun while it lasted. If we have to have cold, I’d prefer that it brings a little snow along with it. Ice? Not so much. Let’s go right down to 28F, skip the ice, and get some snowman material!
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We too witnessed a couple of sleet flurries. No snow though .. the last time we had enough with which to build a snowman was in 2009 (see photo above). Snow-peeps are the best part about the white stuff!
I’m going back to add another picture that I forgot .. Yellowstone. It was BIG TIME snow there (summer vacay), and we couldn’t help but let the kids play on the roadside for a while.
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I remember making snowballs with my dad at the Continental Divide when I was a kid. There’s a photo of us sitting by the sign — such fun!
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Here, we do have a freeze warning out, and my weather site says it’s still below freezing if you count in the wind chill, but when I was outside a while ago, taking kitchen scraps to the compost, it didn’t feel like it was freezing, not even in the shadows, and in spite of the blustery Northerner. Neither the water in the bird baths nor the dew on the grass was frozen. In fact, with the sunshine and the cold air, it’s a wonderful day here. 🙂
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It’s been a crazy year for weather/water here, as I’m sure it was for you too. Glad that you don’t have any flash floods coming your way, and here’s hoping for a non-frozen bird bath. Enjoy the beauty of the day, Pit!
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I don’t mind cold. I want it to drop cold enough and long enough to kill all the pests like mosquitoes. But I can do without the white stuff. Living in MI for 4 years (and 18 days) was enough to eliminate any tolerance I had for it. You will never hear me complain about the hot weather OR the few days of cold we get. 😉
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Ooo! Michigan snowfalls .. some serious stuff. Scott is from Michigan and he seriously misses the seasons. This is what our seasons look like, from a meme care of my daughter:
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LOL! Yep… that pretty much sums it up. We don’t have the clear 4 seasons do we? But at least we do not have snow from Oct to April! 😉
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