DFW’s Snowcone Storm of 2023 confirms again we are weather wimps | Opinion

DFW’s three days of winter are just about over, and it appears that Greg Abbott’s baby, ERCOT, didn’t wet the bed this time.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is indeed reliable, provided you don’t turn on the lights, need heat in the winter, or air conditioning in the summer.

This stretch allowed all of our local weather forecasters the chance to take off their sport coat, loosen the tie, roll up their sleeves and get in Mother Nature’s muck. This is their Presidential election coverage; their Game 7 of the World Series in one glorious, chaotic cocktail of school closings, seven day forecasts of doom, and endless images of car crashes in snarled traffic.

Because despite our ability to withstand heat that can melt fields of cacti, and turn immortals into puddles of their own tears and sweat, we are not built for cold. For wet.

When you combine the two for any length of time we are useless, incapable of doing anything other than buying food and drink in bulk, and hibernating like those giant bears who live in Yellowstone National Park.

Watching our collective behavior in this the Great Snowcone Storm of 2023 and it’s further proof just how right the late, late Texas Gov. Sam Houston was about us and the cold.

In the days leading up to the Civil War, it was Houston who in an effort to stop Texas from joining the Confederacy said, “Let me tell you what is coming: After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern independence, but I doubt it.

“The North is determined to preserve this union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.”

It all comes back to weather, even the Civil War. It all comes down to cold, and our collective disdain and refusal to function in it.

For anybody who makes fun of middle aged men whose days require no less than one combined hour of checking, and triple-checking, the weather forecast, let this be a lesson to you: If the South had paid closer attention to the weather, maybe the outcome would have been different.

This is where Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Stonewall Jackson and the rest of the Confederate generals failed miserably. They had no idea what cold weather does to a man.

They failed to see that it was the cold that helped the North win.

The Union soldiers weren’t necessarily better fighters; they were, however, just that more eager to get out of the cold.

Where were the major battles? In warm climate. Places like South Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Florida, and North Carolina.

Places where those damn Yankees vacation.

As an ex-Yankee, I endorse all of us who wisely escape the North and Midwest and those long days of endless, dreary clouds where “seasonal mood disorder” is as tangible as a snowball.

To you Southerners who “love the snow” and aspire to live in cold weather, no offense, but you’re stupid. All of you.

Once of the charm of fall, and the cheeriness of the holidays, pass, then come the clouds. The sun has flown south for the winter, but you fail to recognize that reality until about January 2.

That’s when it hits you the sun is but a rumor, and Punxsutawney Phil is more important than your wife or kids.

If you haven’t lived in that depressing hellscape, it changes a man.

Yeah, we’re tough when it’s sunny, hot and we can wear shorts and a golf shirt.

We can deal with 95 degrees at 8 a.m. better than most Iguanas.

The Great Snowcone Storm of 2023 just further proved Gov. Houston was right about us.

When it comes to 40 degrees and rainy, we ain’t got it.

And we can only pray our precious ERCOT does.