ALEX HOBEN
editor-in-chief
alexandra.hoben@my.tccd.edu
The cowboy state has melted like the Wicked Witch of the West without any water provided.
It seems the main thing that people can agree on is how laughably hot it is, but it was a problem before the sunny season even started. While sitting directly in front of a fan on a palatable 99 degree June day I received a well meaning message from a friend, “Happy first day of summer!”
Somehow the temperatures were frying the great state of Texas without it even being in the right location around the sun.
Everyone knows summers here are hot, but who could have predicted that we would be soon drowning in our own sweat and tears before even a dark cloud graced the sky.
Almost as if that message were an omen, day by day, week by week and month by month passed without a single drop of rain. Lake’s water levels fell lower with every hour under the blazing sun’s unforgiving rays, plants turning dry and brittle without their life-blood. According to WFAA the DFW area had a 65-day dry streak which is the second longest ever recorded.
In this period of void precipitation, people began to worry more and more about the performance of our power grid. Texas’ energy system is notoriously unreliable in times of stress as we learned in the great freeze of 2021, and now with the scorch of 2022 the problem still remains.
There was a downpour of distrust and even insults thrown online at the Electric Reliability Council of Texas or ERCOT because of the requests of conservation they made to the Texas community.
When it was obvious that the heat wave that swept the nation would hold nothing back, they pleaded with the public to limit the consumption of electricity. But I know I didn’t.
In fact, I cranked up my window air conditioner as well as the home unit just so I could be useful to society and not a puddle of melted goo on the floor, and even that was a hard task. It felt like the heat was more oppressive than ever before and I lived in fear that ERCOT would send a letter in the mail personally asking me to help the cause.
The standard of living had hit an all time low when on Tuesday Aug. 8, we were graced with the barest drizzle and it was the best thing to ever happen at that moment. I received texts with so much enthusiasm and happiness over the simplest weather event it was disconcerting.
That’s what this summer has done to us, we celebrate the smallest movements in the stratosphere as if it were the Olympics, but then at least the weather was tolerable for a while.
But then the first week of school came, and it started to pour. Suddenly I had to start driving through puddles on the road big enough that a new ecosystem could form and my car felt like it was snaking through a water slide tunnel.
If there is one thing you can always count on when it comes to Texas weather it is this, it will always find a way to betray you.
