Are you sure this is Texas?!

It seems that most people think of Texas as dry parched soil with tumble weeds and maybe cactus & sage. But then again, they always seem to comment on how humid it is. Being the second largest state geographically, it's climate and environment are quite diverse. 

West Texas country looks similar to the High Desert in southern California, Houston is tropical and humid, and Austin is a little of everything, right on the edge of different climates. The spring and summer are humid, but not like Houston, and not even quite as bad as Ontario Canada. The fall can be bone dry like the desert in California. Instead of getting cold when it rains, like the winter storms in California, it warms up when it rains the heaviest, because it's a result of a tropical system from the Gulf.

It's kind of weird to see the southern Gulf state Live Oak, tall Elms, Mediterranean Cypress, Cedar, Juniper, and Palm trees, and cactus all growing together in the same place.

But Texas is also subject to the cold storms of the Midwest. They're not as bad, but much colder than southern California. Austin seems to be in a "banana belt," so some of these storms seem to dip into Mexico, swing up around us, barely hitting us, and then sometimes swinging back down south into Houston, like the storm pictured. Houston and New Orleans of all places got a few inches of snow covering the ground, while we got sleet that left a smattering of snow. But we're told Austin area gets light snowfall about every 5 years.

December '08 set some Austin records for cold for that month, usually January is the worst (apparently Dec and Jan decided to trade jobs this year), as did the whole country, being one of the coldest for the U.S. if not the northern hemisphere as I understand it. 

I've never had to scrape ice to be able to safely place my ladder while cleaning windows before.

This was after a night of freezing rain in January. I had to do some scraping to get into my truck