Good riddance to April...
Category: Local...
Posted Friday, April 29, 2005 at 08:30 AM [GMT-6]

Warning: The following discussion involves topics and observations that are mind-numbingly pedantic. Reader discretion is advised.

Is it just me or has this year's edition of April in west Texas been one of the less enjoyable months, climate-wise, in recent memory?

It seems like we've had more wind than usual. As a bicyclist, I'm borderline obsessive (OK...I'm completely obsessive) about monitoring wind speed, as it's the single most influential factor on the enjoyability of that sport in our area. I have my own system for classifying days according to their "windiness," and thus far in April, we've had 21 days that met the criterion to be called windy. Even worse, seven of those days fell into the "extraordinarily windy" classification, meaning that sustained winds exceeded 20 mph. (And, by the way, today is forecast to fall into that dreadful category.)

Then there's the lack of rain. Barring a miraculous downpour, we'll end the month without any measurable precipitation. (It would be more dramatic to be able to say that we didn't get a drop of rain in April; unfortunately [for the lovers of dramatic effect], we did get one or two pavement-moistening "weather events.") April isn't usually a wet month -- according to this website, it falls about mid-pack in terms of historical average rainfall -- but it's still unusual for it to be so dry. I was especially hopeful that we'd see a wet spring given the higher than usual rainfall last year and even into the first couple of months of 2005. It's too soon to make this call, but it's easy for the pessimist to conclude that we're about to re-enter the drought cycle that's defined the norm around here for the past ten years.

Thus, I'm not a bit sorry to see April depart. I'm pinning a lot of hopes on May, which has provided a lot of excitement in the past, not the least of which was hosting Babe Ruth's first (5/6/15) and last (5/25/35) home runs, along with the crashing of the Hindenburg (5/6/37) and the sinkings of the Lusitania (5/7/15) and the Bismarck (5/27/41).