Doomsday!

That's right, the end is at hand. You see, a devastating cold front is fast descending on Southeast Texas. Nighttime temperatures are expected to plummet - are you ready for this - to a terrifying low of 30 degrees. By Tuesday we may all be dead from extreme discomfort.

News of the impending disaster made the front page of the Beaumont Enterprise on Sunday, leading to immediate mass hysteria. As late as Sunday evening the weather was still deceptively warm, one might even say a bit muggy, but we knew that by Monday morning we could expect freezing rain, perhaps even snow. Snow! You can forget about all that global warming stuff. Local cooling is gonna get us first.

Most people around here aren't accustomed to cold weather, and overreact when it happens. To give you some idea of how temperate our climate is, the coldest day ever recorded in Beaumont was in January of 1930, when the mercury fell to 11 degrees. That's not very impressive for a record low. Snowfall is rare in Southeast Texas, occurring at intervals of more than a decade - most recently on Christmas Eve, 2004, when we received a light sprinkle. Prior to that, the last time it snowed here was back in 1989, when the paper reports that "less than an inch caused dozens of traffic accidents."
This Orange-crowned Warbler was photographed at our seed feeders of all places. As I've noted before, some of our small insectivores are exhibiting a perverse and unnatural appetite for sunflower seeds. Very odd. Hopefully this cold front will bring some interesting birds our way. In the last few days I've seen Inca Dove and Gray Catbird in our yard, and the addition of Cedar Waxwing on Sunday brings my year list to 127 species.