South Central Texas/Texas Hill Country Weather

If you read the last few blogs it would be easy to walk away thinking it is cold in South Central Texas/Texas Hill Country, unless that is you live in North Dakota or somewhere else where it actually is cold in the winter. Not wanting to leave you with a false impression, I have decided to spend a little time on weather. It is true January 12 and February 12 were very cold days here, unusually cold days in fact. If you live in other parts of the world and want to keep close tabs on the weather here, the nearest big cities to follow would be San Antonio and Austin. Austin is in the middle of the Texas Hill Country, about 160 miles (258 km) to the east. San Antonio is about 120 miles (193 km) southeast. The local news stations that I have access to all come out of San Antonio, so I am much more familiar with their weather and how it compares to mine, then I am of Austin. Generally speaking though, there is probably not much difference between Austin and where I am, compared to San Antonio and my location. It does get colder here then San Antonio and the due to geographical conditions, snow is much more likely here then it is in San Antonio. And based on my observations over the past decade, it appears IF it is going to snow in the Texas Hill Country; it seems it more often snows where I am compared to other parts of the Hill Country. But that does not mean I live in a really cold climate, because I do not. The simple fact that it has snowed two years in a row here is very unusual and even one of the San Antonio weather forecasters remarked how unusual that is. And when it does snow here, folks often drive to where the snow is so their children can have the experience of seeing what snow looks like.

So what is normal winter weather for South Central Texas and the Texas Hill Country? The simple answer is there is no such thing as normal. The best description for the weather here is variety. To give you an example, Sunday February 12 it was cold. The temperature was 27f (-2.77c) when I got up that morning. There was no precipitation when I drove to church. But half an hour later there was snow and sleet coming down hard. When I got out of church it had stopped snowing and though the streets were covered in an icy mess, the drive home was not bad. Around 2:00pm it started raining and continued to rain all day and all night. Sunday’s high was 32f (0c). To my surprise the ground remained covered in snow turned to ice all day. Usually the ground is to warm for anything to stick and with all the rain I fully expected it to melt, but it never did.

Monday morning I was up and dressed by 5:00am, as I had promised to drive some married friends to Fredericksburg (84 miles/135 km) for routine medical screening tests (the kind they put you to sleep while they conduct them). When I got up the temperature outside was 34f (1c) and there was still a thick layer of ice everywhere. Once on the county highway, it is only a little over 3 miles to the east before reaching the next county. It seemed as soon as we drove into the next county the road conditions really improved. The ice disappeared and except for some dense fog, it was easy driving. We never again saw ice. It took us a little over an hour to get to Kerrville (64 miles/ 103 km) and by then the temperature had risen to 39f (3.8c). It was about 2:00pm when we finally got home and by then it was sunny and getting warm. I had a sweatshirt on and outside I was a little too warm (I left my coat in the house).

Tuesday morning it was cool and I did put on a coat when I went outside to feed the animals around 7:15am, but it did not take long to warm up. It was sunny all day and sunny days mean it will warm up quickly. By 9:00am all I had on was a sweatshirt. It was already to warm for a coat. I know the high temperature here was 72f (22c).

It is now early Wednesday morning. The sun has been up for less than an hour. The temperature outside is 58f (14c). It is cloudy with a chance of rain, but should be clearing out by noon and sunny this afternoon. We are expected to reach the low 70’s (21c-23c).

So there you have it, typical South Central Texas/Texas Hill Country weather is never typical. It can be freezing one day and hot the next. So if you hate cold weather and it is a cold day here, it won’t be cold for that long. And while folks in the northern states are just dreaming of when they can plant their vegetable garden, those of us here are already preparing. There is still a chance of a hard freeze so it is still a bit early to plant that garden, but many of us have already started the process.

(It is easy to cover these pots with some sheets when freeze warnings are issued.)

Update: Around 8:30am I decided to take a break from writing and go outside to get a little work done and let the goat graze. I wore only a long sleeve shirt; it was just too warm for a coat. Clouds did move in and it got breezy but rain never appeared. It is now closing in on 2:30pm. It is 68f (20c) outside, but passive solar heating has heated the house to 75f (24c). I learned a long time ago that the sun actually feels hotter here then it does farther north. So I know 68f is actually warm enough for short sleeves. No matter what, 75f is a short sleeve temperature. So there you have it.

Sunday morning it snowed and three days later on Wednesday I am wearing a short sleeve top. Now that is typical winter weather here.

Feasting on Rain

The past week has been a very soggy week. In case you are unaware of Texas weather, south and west Texas got hit hard by rainfall. When it comes to rain, in South Texas it is either feast or famine.

For the past couple years it was famine, one of the worst doubts in recorded history, making Texas a dry, hot and dusty place. Last summer in San Antonio, every high temperature record was broken and then broken again. In fact every day that summer we broke between one to three records as we reached 100f (38c) or above day after day. So when the rains began to come, everyone in Texas began to praise God.

This past week it has been feast. The first three days I saw drizzle to light rain, about 0.20 inch rain daily. Then on Thursday I saw down pours that were unbelievable. At times I could not even see out my windows as they were covered in sheets of water. That evening the rain subsided again into light rain so I trudged through the standing water to my rain gauge to see just how much rain had fallen that day. My gauge only holds 6 inches and it was all the way to the brim. Friday I would see another 1.60 of rain and Saturday a mere 0.25 inches of rain.

This land is very rocky and so it takes awhile for the rain to seep into the ground. As I look out the windows day after day I have felt like I am living in a swamp. I can see pools of water out every window. I literally am living in a marsh right now. Because of all the water I am stuck inside and suffering from a severe case of cabin fever. I want nothing more than to get outside and enjoy nature while I do some outside work. But right now the land is to wet for any outdoor activities.

When I first purchased this property I had plenty of ideas of what I could do to quickly make it a viable place for people in need to come live. But during the past couple months I have realized those first ideas are not practical. At first I thought about a campsite, and though I will allow folks to camp here until better accommodations can be built, this land is very windy. I have lived in windier places but when the wind picks up I think trying to live in a tent would be uncomfortable. Living in a car would be better. Another problem with a camp ground is this land is rocky. Rocks are everywhere and many of the rocks cannot be moved. So, if people want to camp out on the land it will be permitted, but I do not think very comfortable.

Then I got over 6 inches of rain on Wednesday. During the times I was able to look outside the windows I noticed the rain seemed to flow from the north side of the house towards the south side. Though it has not rained today (Sunday) the south side is still full of water while on the other sides of the house the water has soaked into the ground and I just see mud. But on the south side I still see pools of water. This is valuable information. While most of the 20 acres are to the west of the house, I now know how the land flows by the house. It is also apparent to me that all buildings need to be built off the ground. Due to the feast/famine nature of rain around here, placing buildings on cement slabs is dumb. All buildings need to be off the ground so when heavy rains come, the buildings won’t flood.

I admit I am tired of the rain. The forecasters say we should have one more dry day and then more rain is due. Today I learned I had more rain than anyone else I know at church. Most of them got 3 to 4 inches, but one guy saw none. So I am happy to share with him. May God move next week’s rain clouds onto his property. But whatever happens next week with the rain, no matter how bad my cabin fever gets, this past week of rain has given me valuable insight into the land I now live on and is the home of AOCCCI.

Looking For God In The Texas Hill Country

Last time I shared I was getting ready to leave town. Well, bright and early Friday morning I finished packing my car and headed west on IH-10 into the Texas Hill Country. Fortunately I was driving out of town, whereas those commuting to work were going the other direction. So I had little traffic while on the other side of the freeway the traffic was moving at a snail’s pace.

As I shared last time I really did not know where I was supposed to go. I had the general area in mind but as I have joked, God never sent me an email telling me what county to look in. I honestly was prepared to spend five days, sleeping in my car in State Parks and visiting many realtors in many towns. I fully expected to return to San Antonio without finding anything specific but hopefully with a better idea of where God wanted AOCCCI to be located. I did not even bring the checkbook with me that has all the money in it. I just did not expect to need it.

What I expected to happen is not what happened at all. I went looking for God in the Texas Hill Country and I found Him. What occurred last weekend was just plain amazing. Basically, finding a needle in a hay stack would have been less amazing then what I witnessed in a 48 hour period.

When I drove into Kerrville, Texas I had two immediate needs. The first was to buy some window cleaner to clean my outside mirrors. When I saw a store I pulled in, picked up the window cleaner and a brief conversation with the only two employees in the store led me to the Chamber of Commerce, which turned out to be just down the street. Up until their suggestion it had not occurred to me to visit the Chamber of Commerce. Looking back though it was clear God was aiming His light in the Chamber’s direction and I followed it.

Once in the Chamber I picked up some free items that looked interesting and casually mentioned my need of a realtor. The young woman behind the counter said, “I would use this woman” and grabbed Ricki Eichler Real Estate’s brochure and handed it to me.

Once again God was shining His light and fortunately I followed. It would have been very easy for me to veer off God’s path as finding Ricki’s Eichler’s office was not easy. The woman at the Chamber neglected to tell me the highway her office is on gets a new name every few miles. I only learned this after stopping and asking for help. It took awhile but I finally did locate her office. In the process I spotted several other Real Estate offices but it never once occurred to me to stop at any of them. If I had stopped at a different Real Estate office, I would have missed God and/or wasted a lot of time.

Before walking into Ricki’s Eichler’s office, God clearly was directing my path but I had not yet recognized it. But it did not take me long to see God once I was speaking to Ricki. Most of the time when I tell people about AOCCCI, they think I am talking about people with chemical dependency, that is drug addiction. So I am very use to having to explain to people just what Multiple Chemical Sensitivities is. That did not happen when I shared with Ricki the goal of AOCCCI and what I needed in land. Instead Ricki informed me she had once suffered from severe allergies too and just how sick she had once been. I then told her I too had MCS and that God had healed me. She then responded that God had healed her too. At that moment I knew I had a realtor who understood. When I told her I write a newsletter on the mind/body/spirit connection, she said great. God’s lamp was clearly shinning.

Then it was time to get to business. I already knew finding an appropriate piece of land for AOCCCI was not going to be easy. Off and on during the year I had searched the Internet and had picked up a few Real Estate publications aimed at folks looking for rural property. Not once did I ever see anything that would work for me. Usually the land was either way to expensive and promoting huge luxury homes and/or fantastic views (which means not much usable flat land) or properties without any buildings and advertised for hunting. But one thing nice about using a realtor is they have access to multi listing services and knowledge of web sites I have not found. Ricki quickly accessed such web sites. As expected most of the listings in my price range involved only an acre or two or land without buildings, but several possibilities did show up.

Ricki had previous commitments that prevented her from showing me any properties that weekend, so she enlisted the help of another realtor in the office. Though I was shown a property that afternoon, both of them felt another property looked the most promising and Saturday morning shortly after 7:00 the realtor and I headed off for an hour drive to see the property. The seller’s realtor met us near the property and showed us the way. We drove down a caliches road making several turns before finally arriving at our final location. The property features a double wide mobile home, a cabin (which had been turned into a storage building), and a dusty old camper trailer. With 20 acres of flat land, there is plenty of room for a variety of needs.

As I viewed the property, I did not see any real red flags. The few issues I did see would be easy to resolve. The pluses way outweighed any negatives. And then there was the issue of location. On the drive out to see the property I could not help but notice that just down the highway was property that Lee Grover (co-founder) and I had visited back in the 90’s. Last summer I had sensed God telling me to look in the area that Lee and I had looked at property in the 90’s and now a decade later my realtor was taking me to that same area. Once again God’s lamp seemed to be shinning.

I have no idea what the record is for finding a client their future home, but I am sure I am near the top. Ricki and her team showed me two properties in all and I placed an offer on the second one I looked at. I am now in escrow.

Stay tuned for more of this adventure.