Texas Sou'westerner Is Polar Opposite Of Nor'Easter, So We Say

HOUSTON, TX — Welcome to Spring Time in Texas, which is a small window between the brief winter and pending long summer. Spring in Texas means one festival lopped onto another, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes along the highway, later sunsets and heavenly-beautiful weather.

So while those in the northeast hunker down for their fourth massive winter storm in three weeks, here in Texas we'll have another weekend of 82 degree days, light clouds and gorgeous nights.

Our sister Patch locales in the eastern and northern states keep cranking out one story after another, week after week, about the ongoing Nor'easters that pummel them with snow, wind and ice. Not to disservice our readers in the Houston Patches, we figured to crank out an equally opposite weather story with an equally opposite term.

We call it the Sou'westerner. This is a weekend with sunny skies, light winds and comfortable atmosphere. There are people jogging on the trails, riding with their car tops down and folks enjoying city parks. It's a beautiful food-truck eating, patio drinking, opening ceremony of Little League kind of weather. It's for us folks here in the Southwest, when we start planning those beach trips in March.

Why not sou'wester? Well, the term exists, but not to our liking or purpose.

The term sou'wester is searchable, and you can find an historic lodge and vintage travel trailer park on a peninsula in Washington state. Webster calls a sou'wester "a long oilskin coat worn especially at sea during stormy weather." The sou'wester wind is in the United Kingdom.

So in other words, it has nothing to do with a nor'easter as we know it.

Webster has no antonym for sou'wester, nor one for nor'easter. It only makes sense that each should be the opposite of each other because, just like our weather is extremely different from the north, the words themselves are completely opposite directions. Aren't northeast and southwest different?

Sou'westerner is the term we shall use for gorgeous Texas weather. So whether you're out this weekend enjoying the many activities like the Tomball German Heritage Festival, the Kite Festival in Houston, an Easter egg hunt, crawfish boil or just a lazy day, have a great sou'westerner weekend.

Image: A jogger passes near the Houston skyline during the afternoon on March 26, 2013 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images)