Even the National Weather Service was sick of the cold weather in Del Rio.
In its hard freeze warning issued for Saturday night, the NWS forecaster wrote, “One last night of bitterly cold temperatures.” Amen to that.
On Sunday night, as the snow began falling, I sat in my comfortably warm studio in my comfortably warm apartment and wrote about how beautiful the snow looked drifting down in
fat flakes from a slate-colored sky.
At 3 a.m. on Monday, my electricity went out and wasn’t restored until Thursday morning. As my apartment cooled to uncomfortable levels, I was forced to relocate, although the house where I spent the duration of the outage also went without electricity for more than 60 hours.
I want to thank my good friends Brian, Larry, Joel, Jessica and Clint and Karla and Waylon for their offers of help and hospitality over the past week.
Throughout the week, I worried on and off about the birds that make their homes in my neighborhood, but I worried needlessly.
I was most concerned after Thursday’s day-long snowfall, but all day long, the pair of Northern Cardinals that lives just outside the backyard came to the patio for food, along with a passel of sparrows and a pair of Great Kiskadees.
One little visitor that surprised me: A Yellow-rumped Warbler who came and diligently searched the nooks and crannies of the patio for cold-stunned insects. Surprisingly, the little warbler ended up eating some spilled cat food.
I also saw a flock of Cedar Waxwings in the snow-covered trees, a Golden-fronted Woodpecker, even a Cooper’s Hawk cruising low above the tree line.
Unsurprisingly, for the neighborhood flocks of Great-tailed Grackles, this week was business as usual.
The cold didn’t seem to affect the birds at all, and I marveled again at the incredible insulating properties of their feathers. I’m very glad that all of my bird neighbors weathered the storms.
As many of you know, I was born in South Dakota and came to Texas from North Dakota, and although I endured many long cold winters in the Dakotas, it was never without electricity, and I was beyond grateful when the power was finally restored here.
I think a snow-covered landscape is lovely, but what we had this past week was more than enough for me, and I am truly looking forward to the return of the warmer weather.
