Georgia hasn't gotten that much rain lately either. But no place is in as bad of a drought as Texas right now. I'd imagine plants, yards, crops, etc. aren't doing too good over there.

Last week an Agave plant in front of our house -- the agave is native to desert climates -- was turning yellow and wilting. I've never seen that before. That's like a cactus dying from lack of water!

Actually, the cacti in my uncle's area (north of Houston) are drying up. The forests there are a fire hazard now.

I've been praying ever since last June for the high pressure cell currently situated over Texas to dissipate. This is partly because I know how terribly it is effecting those in the area (especially farmers), and partly for reasons a bit closer to home.

Where I live in Colorado, we didn't get a winter at all last year. A similar high pressure cell was stalled over the state as a result of the strong La Nina, and it forced the winter storm track far to the north. Thus, while Montana was seeing record amounts of snow, we were getting nothing. Day after day, month after month, there was not a cloud in the sky nor a single breath of wind. It is a bit disconcerting to look at the map of U.S. isobars and see a mass of perfectly concentric circles the size of the entire western United States, and centered directly over one's home town. It was 70 degrees in January; and you had to run a fan over your body in order to get to sleep at night, in the middle of what should have been winter.

It may sound silly to say this, but the aberrant weather effected me in a very visceral, spiritual way. It may me feel as if God's providence was failing me, that I was being persecuted by High Heaven in having to endure those merciless, relentless sunlit days. I need autumn. I need the smell of falling leaves, the crunch of frost under my feet; I need to take walks under grey, portentuous clouds in a cold October sky, and come home to a cup of tea and a good book. I need that Restless Feeling that Gordon Lightfoot sang so eloquently about.

Only that autumn I had quite a different restless feeling. I grew to hate the unabating sun and his penetrating rays that afforded no sleep to the weary. I especially began to resent the people who were partying it up, continuing their summer fun sessions long into the sidereal winter, as if the unusual weather were some kind of gift. "Don't you care about what this is doing in Texas," I would think to myself. I prayed to God to stop the torture, but not really expecting that I would be heard.

My prayers were disappointed until May, when the last fading gasps of winter finally brought an abundance of rain to the Front Range. It was a welcome relief, but the memory of that horrible winter is seared into my mind like the after-image of a welder's arc burned into unprotected retinas. I now pray that I will never have to experience that again, and I have a great deal of sympathy for those who experience it now.

On a side note, much thanks to my mother, who was pregnant with me during the brutal 1980 heat wave in San Antonio, Texas, which I heard has just now fallen to second place behind the current one.

I will pray for you. Believe me, I will pray.