January Winds

 In January the winds really start to kick up and the month has sometimes been notable for dust storms, one after another, the sky turning brown. If not, then January tends to be brutally cold with one ice storm after another. Name your poison. I guess I'd rather have dirt and high wind to deal with than ice. It's a climate of extremes around here. I've lived in Lubbock more or less continuously since 1967. I think I've seen it all, including an F5 tornado that tore the heck out of the area I lived in at that time. For several years after that, tornado watches, alerts, and warnings were common. Now, not so common. We were in the heart of "Tornado Alley". Tornado Alley seems to be a thing of the past. The climate has definitely changed! And it is still changing. 

There used to be huge fields of sunflowers around Lubbock, mixed with the cotton fields. Nobody tries to grow sunflowers now, and I think the change in rainfall patterns must account for that. Annual rainfall is way down, with drought the norm. Cotton does not even do well now. In fact, I remember corn fields, years ago! There's not much you can grow when you've got little to no soil moisture. I think, in terms of survival, Lubbock and the surrounding towns have dismal prospects. We are becoming more and more dependent on a supply of ground water that is NOT renewable-- a finite resource. Nobody likes to talk about that, or think about that. But that is the reality.