One Hail of a Storm

We had one of those once-every-thirty-year storms on Wednesday.  It dumped so much hail in one area that it drifted up to four feet deep.

I actually pulled this photo from the Daily Mail in London, UK. The Brits, with their usual dry humor, found the story to be either a bit affable or completely unbelievable.  (Here's the story.)

But it's true.  We get those kinds of storm here every once in a while.  In 1993, a similar storm dumped up to 6 feet of hail and nearly a foot of rain about 20 miles South of my parent's house.  The hail took nearly two months to melt in the Texas heat, and the playa lakes that formed took close to three years to dry up in the West Texas desert climate. 

Here's a short video clip someone took of some of the flash flooding the next day.  You can't see much, as they didn't get any wide-angle shots, but you can see why flash floods kill people who are caught by surprise in a low-lying area.

Not a snowstorm; but a hail storm.

We've been stuck in a two-year long drought here.  The rain is welcome.  I just wish we didn't get it all back in one storm!

The Sunsets in West Texas

There are a lot of things about the weather in West Texas that can be rightly complained about, but the sunsets make up for most of them.  Here's one, taken tonight from my back porch.

Living in West Texas

I found this short video on YouTube while doing some random searches.  It is an aerial view of parts of Amarillo along with some similar shots of the Palo Duro Canyon.  Most people think Amarillo is completely flat, and the city itself is.  But as soon as you leave to the north, you drive through the Canadian River breaks for an hour (all the way to Dumas) before you hit the high plains again.

The Palo Duro Canyon itself is the second largest canyon in the US (according to the State Park folks here).  It is about 20 miles southeast of Amarillo, and only 8 miles east of my house.



Of course, no post on this topic would be complete without a link to Jason Aldean's song, Amarillo Sky.  So here you go.