Weather

Tyler, Texas, which has produced many yellow roses and U.S. Representative Louie Gohmert, is also home to Neal Barton. Barton is the news director of KETK, the local NBC affiliate, who occasionally takes the liberty of delivering a bombastic on-air op-ed. Think Dale Hansen, minus the humor and self-awareness. On…

To everyone in town this weekend for what are apparently a series of basketball games played by unpaid teenagers, we say welcome! Welcome to North Texas! How was the weather last night? That bad, huh? Well. If a few tornadoes and storms and the odd bit of baseball-sized hail are…

Last week, I predicted thunder, rain, and general apocalypse. I said all of your weekends would be ruined, and that you should all stay inside. In my defense, it was quite overcast. I never said I was a weather forecaster…

You see all that brightness outside right now? It’s pretty great, isn’t it? It’s been like that all week. You might have made plans to spend a Saturday outside for the first time since The Great Ice Storm of 2013 obscured the sun and turned us all into shut-ins. Maybe…

Here’s hoping you were able to avoid driving this morning. If you did have to get behind the wheel, here’s hoping your route didn’t include Interstate 45 through Corsicana, which tweets and media reports confirm is an ice-covered parking lot. This presents some rather obvious challenge. For first responders, it’s…

Tomorrow is the beginning of March, which means the winter that brought you such weather catastrophes as Ice Storm Cleon and ICE FORCE LEVEL TWO will be officially over, right? RIGHT? Sure, spring doesn’t officially begin until March 20, but this is Texas. This is supposed to be the time…

Remember Brian Aiken? He’s the guy who shot the mesmerizing “Dallas From Above” video. See also: A Photographer Used a Drone to Shoot a Video of Dallas, and It’s Awesome Well, he’s done it again. And by “it” we mean use a camera-equipped drone to shoot incredible aerial footage of…

Welcome to our second ever live weather blog, where the news is made up and the weather doesn’t really matter. Here are the facts — it’s cold. How cold, you ask? Well, imaginary internet person, it’s really very cold. Cold enough that, were Jack Nicholson to head outside with an…

When I woke up this morning and my journey to the backyard to let the dogs out confirmed what Pete Delkus had foretold — that it was really cold — the plan was to hunker down, put on an extra pot of coffee and blog from home. Then, I saw…

Congratulations, Texas. You successfully averted a morning of rolling power blackouts. Less than an hour after ERCOT, the state’s power-grid manager, issued an emergency alert pleading with customers to conserve electricity, the declaration was rescinded after Texans rushed to lower their thermostats and turn off their gaudy LED lights…

Welcome to the Winter Storm Cleon live blog, where will be constantly updating you about a storm that is potentially the apocalypse, another damp squib, or somewhere in between the two. As you are no doubt aware, the Weather Channel’s harbinger of sky death, Jim Cantore, is on the ground…

Nearly a quarter million homes and businesses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are without electricity as a winter storm encases North Texas in ice. Some 2,500 Oncor Electric Delivery linemen and contractors are currently working to restore power. “We’ve been prepping for this all week,” Oncor spokesperson Jeamy Molina tells…

Two weeks ago, Dallas breathed out a triumphant chuckle when the massive winter storm that promised to encase the city in ice and smother all signs of life arrived instead as a chilly but gentle rain. No way would the weather gods have the chutzpah to mess with the Big…

The summer of 2011 will go down as one of the hottest, driest years on record. Heat drove Texans to their thermostats and the electric grid to the brink of rolling blackouts. Tuesday, with those unbelievable temperatures in mind, grid managers convened to discuss whether they should raise the target…

It’s that time of year again, when the feds single out Texas’ precariously thin power reserves. Even California — a state not known for electrical reliability — is projected to experience fewer problems with its power grid as the summer heat drives residents to their thermostats. A reserve margin is…

Last fall, I drove down to the Calvary Church of Granbury, a Pentecostal congregation in the little town southwest of Fort Worth that was devastated by last night’s tornadoes. It’s a tiny building with vivid green carpet, next to an empty field and just up a narrow country road from…

First, a bit of background. There’s a giant banana-shaped car making its way across the country right now. It’s official name is the Big Banana Car, and it’s the brainchild of a Brit named Steve Braithwaite who, along with his brother, is “making a documentary film about building a huge…

As day breaks in North Texas, residents are surveying the devastation wreaked by last night’s storms. Dallas escaped the worst of it. The tornado sirens by our place just south of White Rock got going around 9 p.m. and kept on for a half hour, but we saw nothing but…

It’s freezing in New York–where the hell is global warming?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2013 It’s cold this morning. Not quite freezing like in New York, but it’s 40 degrees. In North Texas. In late April. It’s a little odd, a bit of a surprise. Less surprising: That…

Just in case all this temperate whether has lulled you into the perception that the Texas power grid doesn’t have the thinnest margin of safety between lights on and lights out anywhere in the country, here’s a reminder: Summer is coming. ERCOT, the grid operator for most of Texas, says…

Last winter was a godsend. After surviving the driest year in Texas history, we got one of the wettest winters on record. Since April, though, North Texas has been racking up rain deficits, according to the National Weather Service’s winter outlook. October was drier than usual, and November saw virtually…