Now that I’ve recovered from my yearly disappointment in not having a white Christmas in East Texas (unless you count the massive accumulation of almond bark I ate), the time of year has finally arrived when we Texans occasionally have our winter-precip sensitivities triggered by the National Weather Service.
Over the course of one recent day, we were notified of a Winter Storm Warning, a Winter Weather Advisory, a Winter Storm Watch and an It’s-Not-Going-To-Do-Anything-You-Bunch-Of-Rednecks Alert.
This meant that we immediately inflicted shock and awe on Walmart’s bread and milk shelves, frantically prepping to binge on carbs and lactose, which provided us with the energy needed to drag our shorts and tank tops back out of storage the next day.
You see, here in East Texas, and in much of the South, we don’t really have “winter” in the traditional sense of sustained temperatures below the armpit-sweating point. In fact, witnessing snow here is about as rare as finding a bottle of water that isn’t half empty and three days stale in one of my three semi-grown daughters’ bedrooms.
But when it does happen, East Texans tend to fall into one of two camps (or RV parks). There are those of us who get excited about the prospect of a mild disruption to the daily grind of work and school–replaced with a day or two lounging by the fireplace (or the burn pile), enjoying the transformed landscape and laughing at our pets as they try to navigate their outdoor potty time without freezing off something important. Then there are those with utter disdain for any weather event that doesn’t require sunscreen, extra deodorant and the potential for chafing.
Copyright 2025 Jase Graves distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.