January 8, 2015 (Thursday)
As we approach mid-January, the temperatures are plummeting toward the freeze mark and the wind is creating “feels-like” temperatures below freezing. We are fortunate, however, to live in a semi-tropical weather zone in which freezing weather is rare.
This area of the state is usually relatively pleasant in the winter. In earlier years, we lived in parts of Texas where we actually had blizzards (rarely). During the three winters we lived in Dallas, we experienced two Sundays of each January in which we could not heat our sanctuary properly. Fortunately, the church still had the old auditorium in which they had formerly worshiped. It could be heated adequately and, even though the number of people was smaller in the bad weather, the fellowship was better than ever because of the close seating and smaller room. Ten years earlier, in my first pastorate at Oletha in Central Texas, we clustered one cold evening around a wood stove for the service. When we were living in or near Fort Worth, we had some bad winters with ice storms that prevented travel.
If the forecast holds out to be true, then nearby counties will have freezing temperatures 
during this cold spell. Hopefully, we will not see temperatures that low here in Rockport. But the wind chill effect will make it seem like below freezing. We can have hard freezes here. We have seen winters in which many fish were killed in icy waters, and many homes were damaged by thaws in frozen, broken plumbing but that hasn’t happened since..oh, I don’t know..a while back. I won’t be disappointed if we have no more of those winters.
My grand daughter, Angela, lives in Omaha where the high yesterday was 9°, and the low this morning was -2°. As they say, she is “used to it.” I don’t think I could ever be comfortable in such a climate. When we lived at Briar, northwest of Fort Worth, the concrete steps from our back door iced over, so I boiled a kettle of water and threw it onto the thin ice. Right before my eyes, the hot water instantly turned to thick ice as it reached the concrete. It’s an effect that takes place because of the nature of water molecules (deep subject–too deep for me). I was totally surprised (and disappointed) when it happened. It’s known today as the Mpemba effect, but was not named until the 1960’s, and my experience happened in the late 1950’s. It didn’t have a name then, but the phenomenon had been studied long ago by men like Aristotle.
Glad that isn’t a problem for us in Rockport this week.