What a difference a few days makes.

Three days ago, this was the forecast for Hurricane Ike:

And that would be San Antonio, right in the middle of the path that was forecast. We stocked up on supplies, local weather guy was predicting 100 MPH winds, and it was general doom and gloom us.

Of course, we all know how difficult it is to predict the track of storms, as has been evident by all of the doom and gloom that just didn’t come true this year.

This is Ike’s current track:

At this rate, it looks like Mom and Dad may get more rain out of it than we will. I’ve been watching the skies all day, and we’ve had some beautiful high clouds, but that’s it. No rain, no wind.

I hope we get some rain tomorrow, but with as far off as the forecasts have been all week, I won’t be surprised if we get left high and dry from Ike. It’s a lot like Rita a few years ago…pouring rain in Houston, just three hours east, and not a drop of rain here.

It looks like it’s finally trying to be winter around here. We woke up this morning to a chilly 38 degrees.

Of course the high is supposed to be 71. Saturday is supposed to be 82.

And so goes December in south Texas. Just a taste of winter. Just enough to get you into the Christmas spirit, then it’s back to shorts and t-shirts for the weekend.

Best part – no shoveling snow, no scraping ice off the windshield.

Tuesday evening, there was a chill in the air.

OK, maybe mid 70′s isn’t a chill, but around here, it’s a break from the usual.

Anyway, it felt a bit more like fall. Overcast all day, cool(er) damp, air. The kind of weather that made me feel like cooking something. Not something on the grill, but something in the kitchen that would (ack!) warm my soul.

Monica was at class, so Rachel and I went to the store, we bought veggies and egg noodles. Monica had already defrosted the chicken, and when I got home, we started on dinner. I made us steamed broccoli, zucchini and carrots, chicken with a cream of mushroom sauce and noodles. The kind of meal I used to love having in the dead of winter. The kind of food that made me gain 20 pounds when we lived in Chicago.

But it was good, and it did warm the soul.

Then on Wednesday, it was over. Sunny, humid and 90.

So goes October in South Texas.

Just in case ya’ll were wondering, yes, we did get slammed with Tropical Storm Erin today. Since the center of the storm came on shore south of San Antonio, we got the rainy side. It started raining today around 6 AM and didn’t stop until late in the afternoon.

Luckily, I had taken a half day off since Monica and Rachel are both not feeling well, and I came home from work at noon. The worst of the rain hit early in the afternoon. Overall, we got somewhere between 8-10 inches of rain. Other parts of the area got well over a foot.

It’s funny, actually, because I’m not used to warm rain, but the rain today was warm, like a lukewarm shower. Usually, when it rains around here it’s because a cold front is moving through and the rain is chilly.

These pictures are from Culebra Creek, which runs close to our house (but not too close). Normally during the summer, it’s a dry creek bed. Maybe a trickle of water running through. Today, it was way out of it’s banks. The houses in the background are about 15-20 feet above the lowest point in the creek bed. The trees in the middle are fully grown.

And this road has been flooded out so many times this summer, I can’t even count them all anymore. This is the first time I’ve ever seen the water this close to the barricades, though.

Everyone here is OK…our house sits about 100 feet above the creek (and almost a mile away). Just a lot of water, but the winds had died down by the time the storm had made it this far inland. We had some gusts, but nothing too big.