Texas Weather: Gotta love it.

Farmers fought a drought all summer, and now that the cotton is ready for harvest, they have to fight rain. Amateur weathermen, better known as Brazos Valley farmers, have reported almost 20 inches of rain in parts of the Brazos Valley in the past couple of weeks. And they have a good reason to pay attention, a whole crop can be ruined if it stays wet and warm too long.

In just a couple of weeks, we morphed from a semi-arid desert to a lush rainforest. That's Texas weather, especially on the east side. A bunch of toadstools popped up in my backyard during the rains, happy as they could be. Texas is a land of extremes and changes and surprises. Most of them have little or nothing to do with anything positive. Every year is different. Farmers try to scheme and out-smart the weather and still get skunked every time. Local farmers have to just sit on their hands as these relentlass autumn rains set in and drench their cotton crop... now begging to be harvested, and which eventually begins to rot and mold if not harvested. First you endure the drought, then you lose it to rain, after the growing season is passed. That's Texas Cotton farming. You gotta love Texas weather, it gives you something to talk about.

"Is it cold enough for ya?"

"They are having funnel clouds in College Station"

"Another hurricane, expected to land at Corpus Christi, or Bolivar, or Freeport..."

"Damn it's hot! When did we have Spring?"

"Another Christmas in shortsleeves"

"There's goes a trailride, it's time for another Blue Norther"

"I've got cracks in my yard that would cripple a horse."

"I'll never complain about needing rain again..."

I checked in Adolphus Sterne's journal, For several consecutive days in mid-October 1841, Nacogdoches merchant Adolphus Sterne started his journal with: "Rain last night, and a great deal today," and the next day, "Very sultry warm weather," and then "Very warm, showers of rain," and another day, "very warm weather last night, rain..." Several days of relentless rain, accompanied by warm, muggy weather. And in those days, there were no paved streets, no gutters, no sidewalks. They had even more to talk about.

"Paw, rig up the mules, the buckboard is stuck in the middle of the road, and the horse is belly deep."

"Put off yore courtin', Son, better pick cotton all night, and get as much as we can before the storm hits."

"The corn's just nubbin's, might as well gather it and feed it to the hawgs."

So all in all, we have it great now don't we?