In summer temperatures can reach the 100 plus digits for weeks, and spikes up to 115 degrees F. took place, especially in August.

In winter “Northers” sweep down the Great Plains from Canada with sudden drop in temperature as much as 40 degrees, from pleasant fall weather to howling winds and below freezing, in a matter of minutes as the cold front passes through.

Large thunder storms formed with lightning striking the highest point on the plains, which made even a man standing up at risk. Hail large enough to knock a man unconscious or even kill him fell from the thunder storms. Strong winds moved under these thunder storms that could tear away tents.

And some areas frequently had tornados that ripped up trees and anything in their path.

The Plains Indians were subject to very hot and cold weather that abruptly changed with weather moving down the plains in waves that changed abruptly.

The high planes of the panhandle were much the same as today and the Big Bend area had far greater water and tall prairie that is desert today.

Buffalo ranged in land which today has no running surface water or plains but had both and provided rich grazing and water for man and beast in West Texas.

The coastal plains were high prairie reaching to the thigh of a man mounted on horseback, with an ecosystem filled with plants and a host of birds and animals that no longer exists today.

An example of a habitat dependent bird that has disappeared due to the changes of the native coastal prairie is the Prairie Chicken.

Overall the weather differed dramatically in the amount of water, both surface water and precipitation the far greater prairie and vegetation caused.

There is no question the weather was different because the early settlers of what was then Tejas,

a part of Mexico, described riding in deep lush prairie in the high plains/Big Bend of West Texas that is now desert. And the common fauna of the Coastal Prairie described no longer exists today.