We live in North Central Texas. This area is included in tornado alley, and we have quite a few storms yearly. Texas has always produced the greatest variety of weather found anywhere in the United States. The summers here are hot and dry, with an occasional storm. The fall is hot and changeable early on, with a few storms, and sometimes heavy rains from tropical Gulf storms. Then by mid-October it starts to really cool down - a delightful time of the year here. The winters are fairly nice, but very rarely there will be days of really cold temperatures and sometimes icy weather. The spring is beautiful in North Texas, but look-out for some really bad storms here in the spring, with the contrasting cold/warm air masses that pass through the area. The result can be what you see below:
F3 Tornado Photos by Sandra Callaway-Lake Whitney, Spring of 2000Two of my favorite subjects: genealogy and weather. Records in my lifetime of living in this area: the coldest I personally can remember occurred in 1981, when the temperature dropped to minus 8 degrees fahrenheit. The hottest summer was 1980, when this area experienced many, many days of 100 degree plus weather, one day as hot as 115 degrees. It was the worst summer we have ever known - a real record breaker. The most snow came about 1983, when we recorded 12 inches at our house. The opening banner to this page shows Al in our wooded area during that time period. This area of Texas is always subject to flooding rains and damaging droughts too. The last two summers have been bad drought years, with some people getting a little rain, and others, not a drop.
Historically, the weather has sometimes played a significant role in the lives of our ancestors. Being interested in our family genealogy, I did a little study regarding the places they lived and how the weather might have influenced them in any way. My mother, Ruth Fisher Mauldin, had witnessed many a tornado in her time of living in Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1957, we were living in Oak Cliff (suburb of Dallas) when we closely viewed that bad tornado that ripped through Dallas. Then, into the not-too-distant history, we might read about the "Dust Bowl Days" (see links below). Al's Castleman ancestors lived in far NE Texas and were probably not as effected as some people were. My Mauldin ancestors lived in Pottawatomie county, OK and some in Kansas - and probably suffered from this weather phenomenon. My John Wesley Lee family lived in Grayson Co., TX in the 1890s and probably witnessed some of the trauma caused by the disastrous tornado that swept through Sherman, killing about 66 persons, injuring many others, and causing severe property damage. That was the late afternoon of Friday, May 15, 1896.
On the 18th day of June, 1815, the day of Waterloo, a terrific cyclone swept over Southern Illinois and Indiana clear into Ohio. It left a track of broken, twisted, tangled, fallen timber nearly a mile wide through White Co., IL. My FISHER/BRAKE/BOYLE families lived in that area.
Check out my links and see what was happening during your ancestors lives (dates are estimates):
CASTLEMAN in New York (1709-1750); Pennsylvania (1750-1790); Tennessee (1790-1899) and Texas (1888-1967);
FISHER in Pennsylvania (1749-1780); Virginia (1780-1820); Indiana (1835-1870); Illinois (1849-1887) and Texas (1887-1974);
MAULDIN in North & South Carolina (1760-1815); Alabama (1815-1838), Mississippi (1838-1890), Arkansas (1865-1885); Texas (1890-1900) and Oklahoma (1930-1986);
THOMPSON in South Carolina (1780-1880); and Texas (1880-1982).
HISTORICAL WEATHER LINKS:
Use these links to find out what the weather was like in the past, and how it may have influenced your ancestors, back in time:
Below are the many links we enjoy visiting. Let us know if you enjoy this page or have a link you would like to see linked here (see E-mail graphic below for address). Thanks for stopping by to see us! Please feel free to visit our other link pages listed in the table at the end of this page. On my Animal Picture Page, you will see some of our beautiful Texas sunsets, and other pictures showing some of our ever-changing weather.
Want to see what the weather is doing in your area?
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MY FAVORITE CAM SITES:
If you would like to see what the weather is like in almost "real" time, visit some of my favorite CAM sites: