Snow & 3Degrees

Photo taken over my courtyard fence at 6:10:15pm on Sunday, February 14.

Arctic temps and snow are not unheard of nor unfelt in the Northern tier of Texas counties. Most often in Dallas we experience sleet or ice storms and the occasional snow flurries--with minimal accumulation, often gone the next day. That said we've had our shared of below freezing days-in-a-row and snow, but nothing like this: temps in Dallas of 3 degrees and windchills in the negative double digits! It was cold enough to take out enough of the vaunted Texas grid by crippling the 'renewable resources' of wind and solar power and thus the rest of the electric grid. In addition to the plunging temps were the millions plunged into darkness due to rolling blackouts that were more blackout than on.

Using 'plunge' for the fourth time, the jet stream carrying this cold weather plunged all the way to the Texas Gulf coast. Remember, Texas is one of our country's bigger states. From the northern tip of the Texas panhandle to Texas' most southern point is just over 800 miles as the crow flies, if he or she could fly that far and fly in a straight line.

For much of the last week I had no power: no heat, no electric oven or stove top, no refrigerator, no lights, no coffee maker, no Internet, no computer, no TV. I did have my iPhone--a life saver. And for five of the last seven days I had no running water. Pretty much the scenario a writer would make up for a post-apocalyptic story.

The bright spot in the dark and cold, so to speak, was the realization that I could still go 'old school'! As I was no longer able to pound out the words to my 17th novel (No, It's Raining) on my iMac... I could still write the manuscript in longhand! I grabbed an old legal-size wooden clipboard and a yellow legal pad and pencil and went to work. Over the next few days I added around 8,000 words to the story. Given the same time period, I likely would have doubled or tripled that word count on my computer. But, hey, it even felt good to go 'old school'. That said, I would hate to have to hand write my usual 100K average words per novel and then transcribe them from 'my handwriting' into readable typed text. (grin)

I am thankful to once again have full power and running water. I am grateful I had no damage and feel lucky compared to woes and aftermath experienced and being experienced by millions of my Texas neighbors across the Lone Star State.