Froze Season is here - and it ain't happy

Texas is a beautiful place, where the sky tries to kill us regularly and the earth matches it in kind.  There are four seasons of Texas Weather - Tornado Season, Fire Season,  More Fire Season and Froze Season. 

In case you haven’t heard, Froze Season is now upon us.  You will know it by the rush of patronage to all the fine establishments;  milk, eggs, tortillas, kitty litter, ammo and Dr. Pepper are loaded into carts and toted away with all due haste, as vehicular death can occur at any moment after the first crystalline water particle falls to earth. 

Froze Season lasts approximately two weeks, and is accompanied by an occasional flake and the most bone-chilling atrocity to ever pass for wind. It is also accompanied by the sound of children crying when it still doesn’t result in a snow day. This time, however, it is different…

An ice storm is coming.  Not just any old ice storm, it is the heir apparent to last year’s hellacious Winter Storm Uri, the earthly embodiment of Dante’s Ninth Level of Hell, complete with frozen Devil in our midst.  Texans are having bad flashbacks, accompanied by cravings for bottled water, as that was all to be had for two weeks straight, and it became the dearest item in the land, to be shared with neighbors and celebrated by all who had any to spare.

Now, we prepare again as the frigid maelstrom descends. Hay is delivered to  cattle and horses; chickens are roosting in the plyboard chicken house beneath a heat lamp, and fainting goats are waiting until the storm hits to deliver their their baby kid-goats. All seems well in the barnyard, but the house is not yet done. It is never done - the cornbread has been baked, rice and beans cooked, and a lovely oatmeal cake staged in the oven to distract us when our fingers get too cold to move again.  Wood from that oak that fell in last year’s ice storm has been gathered and split, and a tank of water has been set aside for all those who swear with God as their witness, they’ll never go waterless again -

but it is still not done.  The last element cannot be in place until the ice descends; then everyone shall jump in their pickup trucks to drive down to Miss Celedon’s house to check on her, because she wouldn’t leave her fifteen weenie dogs behind to go to Miss Nellie’s house, and now she can’t get out and we must rescue her.  Then we all slide off the road and into the ditch and wait for our neighbors and the VFD to come help us out so we can get down the road again, delivering ourselves and others from Evil in the form of Ice.

But ‘til then, we wait.

The Blue Norther has hit, with the temperature dropping 20 degreess in minutes; any moment, the first flakes will fall, and the adventure will begin.  We look out the front porch, and watch the sky descend, not a tornado this time, but another bitter wind that just so recently brought death to the Texas plains…

Froze Season is here.