i guess we're um uh we're we're experiencing uh what to me i guess is a surprisingly mild uh winter
uh we've had a lot more warm weather than usual and we haven't had any ice storms uh usually we have at least one
um course i've only lived here three years but uh but that in still in that three years you could always count on at least one ice storm
my husband's been in Dallas during an ice storm he said that he pulled up to a stop at a stop sign and completely stopped just slid to the side of the curb that they're that bad Lubbock
yeah yeah yeah
we get ice storms but not not quite to that extent it's not the thin sheet you know all across the road ours if it ices over it's thick it's with snow it's something that you can drive on you can get a little traction with
yeah
yeah
uh i think we've been fortunate that we've missed
any of the real bad weather this year because we went to California instead but right now
oh
um we're having unusually warm weather it's it's almost like they're trying it's trying to skip spring and go straight to summer it's either
yeah
uh thirty degrees you know one day and ninety the next and and we're missing the fifties and sixties in there somewhere
right that's right it's it's the same way here how long have you lived in Lubbock
well i have been here permanently or full time since nineteen eighty and uh
uh-huh
pretty much off and on since seventy four so really quite a while and i've watched the weather shift you know i can remember being here back in the seventies in college and the spring dust storms were
wow yeah
uh they were massive i mean you could stand on one side of the street and not see buildings across the street
dust storms whoa yeah
that dust yeah not fun to be in but i haven't seen any like that in probably five or ten years
huh
so it's it's changing and the summers are getting hot and the winters are cold but
i guess i can live with it
well i know when we first moved here it was uh it was at the very beginning of the year nineteen eighty seven
um-hum
and uh we when we left we moved from New Hampshire where it was snowing
um-hum
and we got here and we just couldn't believe how warm it was i mean it was in the fifties and we were taking off our winter coats and we were all dressed like Eskimos and uh and then soon after we had this big ice storm
uh where everything was just covered with like an inch of ice and everybody uh and it was obvious that nobody knew how to drive in this weather
that's true
and uh we were feeling very cocky because course we always in New Hampshire you always have that kind of weather but um
uh and i just i just assumed that was the way it was you know you didn't get snow which was nice because you didn't have to shovel it
and but you always you could expect to have this ice storm and i think there was in the three years we've been here there's been one other ice storm
um you the second year we had an ice storm and i was really surprised that uh that we didn't have anything like that this year
well now does Dallas get snow or is it usually just the ice storm
it it uh well it if you get any snow it's barely enough to hide the brown grass
okay
you know and uh certainly nothing that you have to do anything about um
well that was one reason why i figured that i could stand Lubbock Texas that was about as much winter as i could get because i grew up west coast sunshine green leaves on trees
yeah
came back here and could not realize why i'd been so depressed through the winter
yeah
and realized that that was the first time in my life i had seen trees lose their leaves and uh and course when spring and everything came out again
oh
uh it was beautiful but that's about as much winter as i can take i mean it gets cold here and with wind chill it sometimes gets you know fifteen twenty degrees below because of the wind
sure
right yeah
but it's not six feet of snow and it doesn't stay on the ground six months out of the year and i know the sun is coming
right
well that's the thing uh with us too it's uh just we just
you know in up in New England you had more winter than you had a summer summer and uh you could expect a long winter period uh for instance um
um-hum
we could you could uh in New England it would still be cold i mean ice cold snow kind of weather uh now in March it just in March is is just when things
start uh approaching the fifty degree mark and course we've already had eighty degree weather here and day day before yesterday it got up to eighty eight i think
yeah
well now when did winter start there you said you had more winter than summer
oh winter would start oh yeah winter would start uh in September it would start getting cold in September
now was there actually snow on the ground all that that time from September through what March
there could be yeah there could be and and it came i mean i used to i used to work in Boston which was an hour and a half away
oh goodness
uh-huh
and i would get up at five o'clock in the morning just to shovel out driveway
oh
and that's so i could leave by seven
and uh so i would sometimes take me you know an hour or two to shovel the driveway in the morning and then i'd sitting in that car for an hour an a half
and and well it was actually if the if the weather was bad enough to shovel snow it would take me three hours to get to work
oh my goodness
so and so now it takes me ten minutes
well now was that expected though i mean employers expected people to not necessarily be there on time due to the delays or
oh yeah
uh well they not they didn't expect you to be on time but they did expect you to be there and you the schools well you know they also did a very good job of of shoveling the the streets
yeah
they had the snow plows and the salt trucks and and uh they just you know they were equipped for it whereas here
if you have a bad snow nobody's prepared to do anything about it you know the
everything stops yeah
right right you know you you you'd you get the first you know the first first ice
uh storm and the place closes up
well now do you work at TI
yes uh-huh
i was gonna say there've been several times when i know they had ice storms down in Dallas uh that we would be up here trying to call and it we'd figure out after about the first hour that there ain't nobody at work
yeah
there's nobody there yeah yeah i that happens a lot i i just live ten minutes away and i don't work i don't work in the at the Dallas site i work at the Spring Creek site which is which is in Plano
oh okay
and uh and so i usually i can usually make it i n it's just a hop jump and a
uh whatever the expression is i'm i'm real close right um but uh yeah i'd i'd hate to have to get it go to Dallas drive into Dallas when the weather's like that
hop skip and a jump there you go
well that's good
well are you uh do you prefer the kind of weather that you're getting in Dallas over your years in New Hampshire or do you miss the winters or
oh yeah oh yeah well it's like i keep telling people you don't have to shovel sunshine you know it's uh it's uh
it's just great i mean we're really spoiled i mean there's a lot of things we miss about New England you know uh uh where there's no trees to speak of and the big
you know thick trees we used to have in New England and we used to enjoy it we had a we had two acres of land attached to our house course we only had a thousand sq uare foot house but we had two acres of land and um
oh my goodness
and so we that now we have this we have a house that's three times as big but we have less than a quarter acre lot you know and uh and uh
sure once you're out of the house you're in the street
that's right and uh so we kind of it's it's we've gone from one extreme to the other and that's that's been hard to adjust to but uh the weather we can't oh the weather's been wonderful
that's good i did go up to New England one time during their fall season when the weather was just
oh yeah yeah
you know it was kind of a a brisk feeling outside but it wasn't freezing the leaves were turning and now that part of a winter up there i could truly love but uh
yeah
yeah oh i can remember uh walking around you know taking a lunch break uh you know when the air's real brisk and the
the colors on the trees are just so vivid um oh it was just that that's something i miss i i keep i'm i get homesick thinking about it you know
uh-oh well what about your summers in Dallas now is that similar was it humid up in the New England states like it is down there
oh yeah humid very humid in New England i mean you got hundred degree weather i mean in in in like in the Boston area i Boston's right on the water
yeah
and uh you'd have these hundred degree days where the humidity was just one hundred percent and it was stifling
uh here you in in Dallas in the Dallas area the humidity you get some humid days but it's not nearly as bad you get you get a lot of dry days too
well so that's really no big tell i tell you what that's funny to hear you talk about that because for me to come to Dallas in the summer
is stifling humidity to me because Lubbock is so dry uh you know it may be a hundred and a hundred and five or whatever up here but there is no humidity and it's
is it is it okay
yeah
okay
you know if there's a breeze blowing it's a nice comfortable day and you don't feel like you have to take ten showers a day because you you take a shower and walk outside and the humidity's so great you know you're sweating to death again
oh
yeah
yeah everything's relative i guess yeah because i grew up on the east coast
yeah
oh
and uh i'm originally from Virginia and uh and my memories of summer have always been that stifling humidity
yeah
and compared to the humidity here
you know in fact uh whenever i think about moving you know whenever we talk maybe about moving back to the east coast the thing that comes back to me is that sensation of those stifling summers which which i don't experience here
