December Day 15

Gary Boyd

Thursday

It’s finally feeling like the season… again. After teasing us with an early week of colder than normal weather, Mother Nature brought summer back for a long visit… Today we’ve moved back to feeling like it looks… 42 degrees on the porch this morning. I guess it’s time to retire the shorts and tank tops for awhile.

Then my email brought me this…

Next week
We’re expecting conditions through the middle of next week to support high temperatures in the upper 50s to low 60s, with overnight temperatures generally in the 40s. The global forecast models are still strongly suggesting that a robust front will arrive with Arctic air around Wednesday or Thursday, causing temperatures to plummet a day or two before Christmas Day. Unfortunately, at this range, we don’t have the greatest of confidence in how cold things will get. The range of possibilities is this: lows might get as cold as the upper teens or they might only drop into the mid-30s. I’d lean toward a light freeze in Houston at this time, but my confidence is not particularly high. There also is a non-trivial chance of snow—at this point I’d give the metro area perhaps a 10 or 15 percent chance of a White Christmas.

Notice the last sentence! And yes I know… the metro area runs half way to Dallas (that seems like just a slight exaggeration if you’ve ever driven across Houston). But anytime snow and Houston are mentioned in the same breath I remember the Christmas Miracle of 2004…

Now granted, most of you out there do not get that excited about the possibility of a white Christmas… But, you have to realize, in my 69 years on this earth I’ve seen a white Christmas only once. The picture above the mantle is it… Taken Christmas morning 2004. As a matter of fact I’ve probably only seen about a dozen snows where the ground was actually covered in my life here.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen snows in other parts of the country. Not many, but there have been some memorable occasions. Fall snow in the Blue Ridge Mountains… October no less. A March blizzard in Denver… I’ve driven across the Continental Divide with feet of snow on the ground. But Houston snows are a rarity. And a White Christmas is a miracle! And, you know what, we could use a miracle this holiday season…

Y’all stay safe, stay healthy, and say a prayer for our dysfunctional country and the world… I’ll catch y’all on the other side…

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