Thursday, July 23, 2009

Merriam-Webster Comments on the Weather

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day
July 23, 2009

skosh

\SKOHSH\

noun
Meaning: a small amount : bit, smidgen

Example Sentence: It rained cats and dogs in the Austin area last night much to the relief of many a gardener and farmer but at my house it only rained a skosh.

Sad but true people. A few miles to the north, south, east or west of here and there were rains ranging anywhere from 2 to 10 inches. 10 inches. That may be too much of a good thing.

Here where I live? Not even enough rain to get the driveway wet underneath the oak tree canopy.

It got nice and humid and we could hear the thunder, see flashes of lightning occasionally, but really nothing happened here last night. Kind of a rain tease if you know what I mean.

The forecast is for more rain "in the Austin area" again today. It has rained all around us for days in a row now, the moisture taunting us with a "so near and yet so far" attitude. I keep hearing a weather version of the soup Nazi in my head "No rain for you!".

Time to shake a rattle at the sky, people. Maybe if we all set up our largest fans we could blow this hot dry weather over to the folks on the East Coast where they have had nothing but rainy cool days for the most part. Y'all ready? 1-2-3...Blow!

6 comments:

  1. Okay, I did as you requested and blew until my face turned red. Surely that will help! We only got a few skoshes here. sigh

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  2. I thought I was the only skosh getter in the area. I could look in any direction and see big thunder boomers but above my place was blue skies. Ugh! Bob at Draco Gardens

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  3. We all knew August would be tough on the heels of the June/July baking we'd gotten but I swear - I think even my birdfeeders look wilted and tired lately.

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  4. It's amusing to see the creative ways that Austin bloggers complain about the weather. Yours is one of my favorites. Skohsh indeed.

    It's intense out there. Earlier this summer, one of my kids hoped we wouldn't see any more sometimes islands. She's about to get her wish. I think we're about 4 feet from being able to walk across all of them without getting wet.

    My garden is looking ok, but I thind we're going to have to do something to reduce the amount of grass next year. We don't cover much with grass, and next year, we're going to cover a little less.

    Thanks again for a nice entry.

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  5. Thank you! I love this new word. I got even less than a skohsh.

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  6. Here in the Hudson Valley (NY) and Berkshire Mountain (MA) region we have similarly divergent weather: Mine isn't my neighbor's 12 or 2 or even .2 miles down the road. We all call and ask one another afterward: "What did YOU get?" And, "Did you lose power?"

    One gets a dusting of snow, the other a half-inch layer of ice on everything, the other nothing at all. This time of year, one gets 4 inches of rain in a day, another .4 inches and another just lightning and a power outage. Or 60 mph winds...versus still as can be. And so on.

    Even our temperatures really vary; it's a hilly area, with elevations from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand feet quite close by.

    I hope that today and in the days to come you get much more than a skosh, but not so much that it causes its own havoc. Does that just-right thing ever happen anywhere?

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Rollingwood, Central Texas
Family historian by default. Oldest surviving matriarch on my branch of the Family Tree. Story teller, photo taker, gardener, cook, blabbermouth.