Freeze in The Rio Grande Valley

 33º here in La Feria, TX at 3:25 pm on Friday.  Has gotten a bit cold--was 28º about 2 am and stayed that way until about 10 am.  

This ice in the bird bath was this morning.

Have worked off-and-on with our 30-gallon water heater.  The reset button clicked out a few times; usually just after we got really hot water.  It would work for 10 days or so without anything then click out.  I finally decided maybe the heat elements were going bad, so replaced them--they were eaten up pretty bad for only being used 2 5 month periods out of the 2 years since the heater was installed new.  When turning the electricity back on, found had no juice at the heater.  Checked the lines back to the breaker-box and had juice on the wires there that go under the trailer to the heater, but none at the heater.  I wasn't about to try to pull out the wire run through the undercarriage of the mobile home, so I put in a new set of wires in a PVC conduit down the hall of the laundry room and everything runs well now.  During the time of the distress there were times with odd sounds from the heater, bubbly sounds sometimes, and loud single pops at other times.  When the new wire was installed, it is silent and heats just fine.

Since we have moved the freezer/pantry to the kitchen, I built a shelf overhead for storage and put pipe across for Phyllis to hang clothes from the washer.

Wednesday evening we had our first, of the season, potluck supper.

The other day I took photos of the units along the streets here in Kenwood.  I have them on a photo album Click HERE to look at them.

Couple photos, before this cold spell, of some flowering in the back yard.  Imagine they are all frozen now.

I drained our travel trailer of all water, and covered some flowers and the outside water pipes.

All the potted plants, ours and Gail Ferguson's that we are keeping while they are in Nebraska, are inside the Texas room so no damage to them.

The high for today has been 33 and tonight it is forecast to be 30º by 6 pm and down to 27º by midnight and reach a low of 23º by 5 am and not to get above 32º until 10:30 am tomorrow.  So, a lot of damage will be done to orange and grapefruit trees as well as all the crops at the  truck farming in the Valley.

Hunkering in for a few days.

Have about 50 people signed up for Christmas Dinner at the Rec Hall on Sunday.

LC