Purple and Black
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The Occasional Thought Thread /Scattered thoughts

The bad news - the eye of Hurricane Beryl went directly over our house.

The good news - we were 180 miles away, as RodeoSchro does not do hurricanes.

Beryl was forecasted about a week ago to hit in Mexico. But I've seen enough storms go over the Yucatan Peninsula to know I needed to keep an eye on it. The storm started tracking a little bit more northward, looking like it might come ashore either south of Brownsville, TX or at Brownsville. And then it kept getting forecasted a little more north, a little more north. By Saturday, Corpus Christi was looking like the point of entry.

On Saturday afternoon I told Mrs. RodeoSchro, "I am going to church tomorrow morning and then we are getting out of town!" To which she said, "Tell Joyce Meyer hello from me and then I'm cooking dinner at home Sunday night!" Crud. I knew in my heart that was a bad deal. Not saying "hi" to Joyce Meyer - she's very nice - but sticking around.

Should I play my Man Card? Did I even have a Man Card? The question was rendered moot when Mrs. RodeoSchro went out at 11 AM for Sunday groceries. And a GIANT storm popped up, probably unrelated to Beryl but strong enough to dump an inch on us AND make the power blink on and off. "That's enough for me!" said Mrs. RodeoSchro. "What was I ever thinking when I doubted your wisdom, oh sage and handsome husband!" (She might not have said that last part, things got fuzzy.)

We loaded up the truck and by 2:15 PM were speeding west to New Braunfels, which is where I am right now.

Incredibly, this appears to be the one storm in which our neighborhood did NOT lose power. Our home didn't flood, although the street and the yards did. Well, I don't THINK our house flooded but I'll know for sure tomorrow when we see if the pool overflow went into the house or not.

Anyway, this was one of those hurricanes that none - and I mean NONE - of the notoriously scaredy-cat weather forecasters in Houston told us was going to kill us all. Usually our weather forecasters lead each pre-storm broadcast with "Storm surges could top 10 feet, which will completely flood the Johnson Space Center, downtown Houston, and possibly San Antonio too".

But I knew.
 
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RodeoSchro said:
The bad news - the eye of Hurricane Beryl went directly over our house.

The good news - we were 180 miles away, as RodeoSchro does not do hurricanes.

Beryl was forecasted about a week ago to hit in Mexico. But I've seen enough storms go over the Yucatan Peninsula to know I needed to keep an eye on it. The storm started tracking a little bit more northward, looking like it might come ashore either south of Brownsville, TX or at Brownsville. And then it kept getting forecasted a little more north, a little more north. By Saturday, Corpus Christi was looking like the point of entry.

On Saturday afternoon I told Mrs. RodeoSchro, "I am going to church and then we are getting out of town!" To which she said, "Tell Joyce Meyer hello from me and then I'm cooking dinner at home Sunday night!" Crud. I knew in my heart that was a bad deal. Not saying "hi" to Joyce Meyer - she's very nice - but sticking around.

Should I play my Man Card? Did I even have a Man Card? The question was rendered moot when Mrs. RodeoSchro went out at 11 AM for Sunday groceries. And a GIANT storm popped up, probably unrelated to Beryl but strong enough to dump an inch on us AND make the power blink on and off. "That's enough for me!" said Mrs. RodeoSchro. "What was I ever thinking when I doubted your wisdom, oh sage and handsome husband!" (She might not have said that last part, things got fuzzy.)

We loaded up the truck and by 2:15 AM were speeding west to New Braunfels, which is where I am right now.

Incredibly, this appears to be the one storm in which our neighborhood did NOT lose power. Our home didn't flood, although the street and the yards did. Well, I don't THINK our house flooded but I'll know for sure tomorrow when we see if the pool overflow went into the house or not.

Anyway, this was one of those hurricanes that none - and I mean NONE - of the notoriously scaredy-cat weather forecasters in Houston told us was going to kill us all. Usually our weather forecasters lead each pre-storm broadcast with "Storm surges could top 10 feet, which will completely flood the Johnson Space Center, downtown Houston, and possibly San Antonio too".

But I knew.
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Gosh @RodeoSchro Nothing upon nothing beats being vigilant and so very glad to know Mrs RodeoSchro and your good self are okay. Well done for getting to safe grounds :grouphug: Is your house alright you guys? I am so glad you are both fine.
 
Good news! For us, anyway.

We just got back to Houston, where we found no real problems. Except - apparently a tornado came through our neighborhood. Lots of homes lost all their wooden fences but I didn't see any roof damages. However, our next door neighbor has a giant sycamore tree. Somehow, a branch that was about 30 feet off the ground was ripped off the tree and thrown right into the back of our house. It missed the two small windows but it hit our swimming pool water pipe.

Now, this pipe had frozen during The Great Freeze Of 2022 That Our Idiot Governor Did Not Prepare For, so we had it double-wrapped in insulation. Double wrapped! It turns out that was no match for a tornado-thrown branch.

As we were sitting down to dinner and copious drinks at a dog-friendly restaurant in New Braunfels, a neighbor called to tell me that we had a water leak and the back-yard neighbor's yard was flooded from it. One of my neighbors shut off the water main, and then a friend told me that apparently a branch had broken the pipe.

All that is fixed, we have power, and everything is A-OK. But I have to tell you - Lake Tahoe is looking pretty good right now.
 
RodeoSchro said:
Good news! For us, anyway.

We just got back to Houston, where we found no real problems. Except - apparently a tornado came through our neighborhood. Lots of homes lost all their wooden fences but I didn't see any roof damages. However, our next door neighbor has a giant sycamore tree. Somehow, a branch that was about 30 feet off the ground was ripped off the tree and thrown right into the back of our house. It missed the two small windows but it hit our swimming pool water pipe.

Now, this pipe had frozen during The Great Freeze Of 2022 That Our Idiot Governor Did Not Prepare For, so we had it double-wrapped in insulation. Double wrapped! It turns out that was no match for a tornado-thrown branch.

As we were sitting down to dinner and copious drinks at a dog-friendly restaurant in New Braunfels, a neighbor called to tell me that we had a water leak and the back-yard neighbor's yard was flooded from it. One of my neighbors shut off the water main, and then a friend told me that apparently a branch had broken the pipe.

All that is fixed, we have power, and everything is A-OK. But I have to tell you - Lake Tahoe is looking pretty good right now.
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Glad it wasnt too bad mate
 
Christina_Denied_Tx1885 said:
Gosh @RodeoSchro Nothing upon nothing beats being vigilant and so very glad to know Mrs RodeoSchro and your good self are okay. Well done for getting to safe grounds :grouphug: Is your house alright you guys? I am so glad you are both fine.
Click to expand...

Thanks! But the real thanks go to God and in lots of ways, not the least of which was that pop-up thunderstorm Sunday afternoon that convinced my wife we needed to leave. Because she sure wasn't listening to me!

The house is just fine. No damage but man! There are parts of Houston - including my neighborhood - that look even worse than last month's derecho.
My wife had to pick some people up at the airport yesterday and called me on the way. "RodeoSchro, there are lines and lines of people at all the gas stations down here! Go fill up our other car!" So I did.

We have the usual chain gas stations along the freeway but because of a downed power line, I had to leave the neighborhood via the back way. This took me to an intersection with two convenience stores, both of which have gas pumps.

I went to the first one but they were clean out of gas. However, there were people gassing up at the pumps across the street and as luck would have it, there was one open pump that I was able to slide into. The credit card readers weren't working so I went inside to pay. On the way I noticed that all the pumps had signs taped on them that said "Super and Diesel only". So I charged $50 on my card with the cashier, figuring that was more than enough for a quarter tank of gas.

I went back to my car and began pumping. There was a lady in the pump next to me who asked me, "Can they price gouge like this?" I didn't know what she meant until I looked at the pump. Normally, Super gas is about $3.75/gallon here. Now? $4.99! I said, "Yeah, this is probably illegal but I need gas. By the way, why are people all over town going so nuts for gas?"

She pointed down at the three or four gas cans she was filling and said, "Everyone needs gas for their generators!" So consider this:

There were so many people with nothing but gas-powered generators for power that filling up those generators caused giant lines in almost every gas station in town!

Later that night, we met my wife and her co-workers for dinner. We traded cars and after dinner I decided to see if I could find some gas for the Tahoe. It was about 8:45 PM so I thought my chances were good. But rather than go to the freeway, I once again decided to try a neighborhood convenience store. And I lucked out!

This store had gas and had all types - Regular, Premium and Super. Even better, they had NOT raised their prices! $2.99 a gallon for Regular and I put $42 worth into the Tahoe, filling it up. Score one for me!

If anyone cares, the store that price-gouged was a Shell store, while the one that did not gouge was a Valero store.
 
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