It’s a happy New Year’s Eve

The only thing that makes this a happy New Year’s Eve is that here in the Bandera area of Texas we have been getting rain all day long. It started late last night with a light show and some claps of thunder. I really enjoyed just sitting here in the house, watching and listening to that show. We got some rain in the last few days. Looking at the precipitation map at the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service Precipitation Analysis, we have received between 0.5 and 1 inch of rain in the last seven days.

This rain has been a blessing and relief as we have been in Extreme Drought for a while. Here is the Texas drought map from the National Integrated Drought Information System (if you want to see your state select Regions => States):

I outlined Bandera County in black. It is just northwest of San Antonio. Looking at some of the other maps for states, it appears that LL over at Virtual Mirage is in Exceptional Drought (Arizona, so what — I lived there a year for pilot training and know), drjim and WSF are in Severe Drought there near Boulder, Colorado, the OldNFO is fortunate to be in Abnormally Dry to Moderate Drought as I know he lives in North Central Texas and CW of Daily Time Waster is in Extreme Drought along with me. The following chart shows the drought levels along with drought information current as of December 29th, 2020 for Texas. Each state has a comparable chart along with the map.

While I was preparing the above images and getting some of that other good information around 16:40 local, lo and behold, there was snow falling. It wasn’t heavy, but hey, that is an abnormal occurrence down in these parts. It won’t be a white New Year’s Day. The lead photograph is our fireplace burning on this cold day.

Speaking of New Year’s Day and the new year, I am not much up for wishing “Happy New Year” this year. As I posted over at OldNFO’s blog, I am not very optimistic about the coming year. I think in hindsight (yeah, 2020 – snicker), that this past year will just be prelude to 2021. I fear that no matter what, there will be bad times ahead. We have become multiple, extremely divergent factions living within the same borders with divisions so deep that we cannot live together. Even the political Left has some factions that are so extreme that they may fight among each other. For instance in Colorado, people claiming to be Earth First terrorists, sabotaged the natural gas lines around Aspen. I don’t consider that to be a bastion of Conservatism though I may be wrong. Up in Washington state, trains have been derailed by an unknown group. Then we have Portland, Seattle and some other areas with Democrat Governments suffering from continued rioting by BLM/Antifa.

I, as a Christian, view the current events as a major outbreak of Evil in the greater Cosmological War between Good and Evil. Pray that this great Evil will be taken away.

BillB