A freak winter storm has taken Texas by surprise. For a solid week, snow and sleet have blasted the entire state, driving temperatures into the single digits.
To our northern neighbors, this might seem like a walk in the park. Unfortunately, our cities aren’t prepared for 9-degree weather.
Eyewitness Account from Texas fairy, Tinkerbell:
We’re used to seeing tiny flurries floating in the air on particularly cold nights. This, however, is a brand-new experience. Our property is buried under four inches of real snow!
There are also crystalline icicles dangling off every tree branch. It’s like a scene out of Frozen!
Our trees are losing branches due to the ice and wind, which is kind of dangerous. Both us and our animals have narrowly missed being hit by falling limbs.
The frigid cold has also made keeping the horses hydrated difficult. Since we don’t have heated water buckets, we tried insulating their regular buckets using materials we already had on hand.
Wrapping the buckets with bubble wrap and duct tape has stopped them from turning into chunks of ice, but filling them is still a chore. Until the water hose thaws, our only option is carting them from the kitchen sink to the barn—twice a day.
Aside from the breaking trees and extra work, our family is doing okay. Except we are a bit short on food.
Most of the stores here are closed, and those that are open are pretty bare. No meat, milk, eggs, or bread.
Luckily, we have pet hens!
Thank you all for tuning in, and be sure to check back soon for more doll fun!
If you want to move to a snowier state, you could do much worse than Ohio. 😉 We have about 10 inches of snow outside at the moment. What I’m getting tired of is the colder temperatures. It’s supposed to get up to 35 degrees tomorrow, though!
I’m glad that you found a way to keep those buckets from icing over. Sometimes we have to improvise in extreme weather!
Wow, and I thought 4-inches was a lot of snow! I can’t even imagine what 10-inches would look like.
It started warming up here yesterday, and today it’s a whopping 70-degrees! But that’s Texas weather for you.
Yes, we ended up improvising a lot this past week. Besides wrapping the buckets, we had to rig a few heat lamps for our barn cats and bring our giant guard dog inside (he hates the indoors). It was a fiasco–but a funny one🤣!
Wow, that is a lot of snow! I do agree, if an area isn’t prepared for snow, it might carry some problems or even be dangerous. Here it snowed once a few years back and many people couldn’t get to work because they didn’t have a way to get there. Many stores couldn’t open because of that. I would have never thought that wrapping a bucket in bubble wrap would prevent the water from freezing!
Glad you’re all staying safe and healthy. Take care!
Yes, a few cities shutdown around here because the roads were too icy. In fact, today was the first day we were able to safely leave the house. I know a lot of people were irritated that our electrical grid had problems, but I couldn’t help enjoying the wintry weather. It made me want to move to a snowier state🤔.
I was surprised that bubble wrapping the buckets worked so well. I still plan to get heated buckets before next winter though😆!