Drought (San Antonio, Austin, Amarillo: landscaping, neighborhood, to move)

[shoe01]

State Drought Monitor (http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/DM_state.htm?TX,S - broken link)

Looks like the only areas in the clear are the Amarillo and the Coastal Bend areas. I noticed how brown it looked along I-10 west of San Antonio a few days ago, with lots of charred remains and active fires.

[CptnRn]

Yep, I turned my sprinkler system back on about a month ago, to try and help out my landscaping. We have had very little rain all winter.

[catman]

It is really dry in DFW. We've had 0.01" of rain in March and are way behind for the past several months. Nothing in the offing, either.

[Cathy4017]

It has been so dry in Midland (not that that's uncommon for the area) that they finally instituted watering restrictions, much like what we have here in southern NM.

[catman]

This isn't good. The water restrictions usually don't happen until summer.

[Two4damoney]

Very dry here and we've already had huge grass fires in the neighboring counties.

[Cathy4017]

Originally Posted by catman

This isn't good. The water restrictions usually don't happen until summer.

For Midland, it's a first, as far as I know. We never had them during my 30 years there.

Our watering restrictions here follow the time change, from March to November; it wouldn't surprise me if Midland does the same.

They very recently had huge grass fires that spread over much of West Texas, from just north/northwest of Ozona to Midland--and on up into the Panhandle.

Not going to be a good summer. It's already hot and 80s here.

[pjoseph2]

Another year where we are at the mercy of the vagaries of the weather.

The front lawn is an outdated English tradition that is not sustainable here in Central Texas.

Hope the water restrictions come in early this year. But that will make Austin Water Utility careen into even higher losses.

[elan]

Thanks for the map Shoe01, I'm sure going to go with the dought resistant plants this year. It's looking rough.

[txtoal]

Originally Posted by Two4damoney

Very dry here and we've already had huge grass fires in the neighboring counties.

Same here. The big fire that happened in Bosque and Somervell county last Friday really scared the crap out of me. The wind was blowing it straight out of the south towards our neighborhood. We could smell smoke for 2 days and I've never seen such a haze like that before. To move from a big metropolitian area to a rural area, I will admit, fires/droughts didn't cross my mind much. Now they do.