When I was a young reporter, the sports editor of the small daily we worked for, and I would routinely critique columns the publisher wrote and that of our least-favorite columnist.
All of these years later, I sometime agree with my mother’s long-standing advice about the chickens coming home to roost.
I say that because I would always question my publisher writing about the weather.
What started me down this path today was thinking writing about the weather.
At my age, I’m significantly more interested in weather than those early years in journalism.
Admittedly, the severity of weather makes it more of the topic of the day, particularly the effects of climate change.
Over the last two weeks, we’ve taken a pounding from high winds, heavy rain and some accounts of hail.
And our area is hardly the only one taking a pounding.
But local farmers are reeling from high winds and heavy rain taking its toll on this county’s expansive fields of row crops.
If they’re not getting flooded, the wind is beating the leaves off of the plants.
LCRA has a press release in this week’s edition, saying it was lowering the drought response from the more-strict Level 2 to the slightly less restrictive Level 1.
The levels of the Highland reservoirs’ storage lakes, Buchanan and Travis, are not filling up, by any means, but they’re getting higher from the recent runoffs from upstream rain.
The change in response levels is because of the reservoir level, which is hardly near capacity, because LCRA makes it clear that response can change with drought conditions.
A hot, dry summer can quickly change things for the worse.
I haven’t seen a forecast for this summer that doesn’t predict an active hurricane season, extreme heat and dry conditions.
Thursday is expected to reach 95, for example, with a feel-like of 140…just kidding.
And the thing about weather, it’s always the news nowadays.
That columnist I mentioned earlier in the column always started his writing with the word “well.”
I can’t remember if I’ve done that yet.
But if I start a column by saying, “Well, the weather turned,” I’ll know those hyper-critical chickens have truly returned home to roost.
