South Texas here. I don’t expect much sympathy/commiseration from y’all up-Northerners who are facing some really scary weather. It’s supposed to be in the teens here for a couple of days, but no precipitation, thank goodness, 'cause we don’t have the trucks to spread sand.
The most worrisome part of the impending weather is loss of power because all of the problems with the Texas power grid that led to outages and over 240 deaths a couple of years ago-- guess what? They haven’t been dealt with! (No surprise there.) Unca Greg assures us everything will be find and hunky-dory. And I’M sure there will never be a power outage in the Governor’s Mansion.
I have a gas stove and gas water heater, so that’s good. When I lived in the country, I was all-electric, including an electric pump in the well. So when I lost power, I lost the whole shebang.
The other worrisome thing, as someone mentioned, is high winds bringing down old tree branches. The houses in my neighborhood were mostly built in the 1920s, and as you go south, the houses are older, going back to 1900. Old trees.
I have to say I’m glad my Sweetie-dog crossed the Rainbow Bridge back in June. It’s always sunny and warm there. Except huskies and Newfies can request snow if they want it. She could never have made it through another winter. Here she is in the Big Snow gamely going out to pee at 4:00 am.
Better call first and make sure the surgeon’s going to be there. It would be even worse to do that drive and then discover the people supposed to do the work have stayed home.
Wind and light snow have arrived here. The cats have come into the house.
That isn’t minor, though. If there are cars on the road and suddenly the drivers can’t see where they’re going, that’s an extremely risky situation.
Just to make sure, don’t Texas governors leave town during bad weather? Or was that some other politician?
Agreed. My point was that we’re not predicted to get the heavy snowfalls or super cold temperatures forecast in many other areas affected by this storm. Just a small amount of snow potentially being blown around a lot.
We’re going to go from heavy rain to a huge temperature drop in a mere couple hours tomorrow. Talking flash freeze on the roads. And they can’t put salt down until after it stops raining. Gonna be a real mess trying to get home tomorrow afternoon with those icy roads.
That’s impressive. I think the record for this sort of thing, at least in the continental U.S., occurred in 1943 in the Black Hills of South Dakota, thanks to a brief chinook wind and a rapidly moving cold front.
“In Spearfish, the temperature rose from -4 at 7:32 a.m. to 45 degrees–a rise of 49 degrees—in just two minutes. A couple of hours later, it plunged from 54 back to -4 degrees–a change of 58 degrees in 27 minutes. In downtown Rapid City, the temperature had warmed to +5 degrees by 9:20 a.m., then it quickly warmed to 54 degrees by 9:40 am—a difference of 49 degrees in 20 minutes.”
North Alabama here; The rain is due about 7-8pm followed by a drop from around 47F to 7F overnight. I’m supposed to be driving up to St. Louis Friday and while no moisture is predicted for that day, temps all along the drive will be below 10F. I know that’s not extreme for many of you, but for those of us South of the Mason-Dixon line it’s bone-chiiling. I just hope the moisture clears off the roads before the real chill sets in or I may not be driving tomorrow. We shall see. At least I have gas heat and the electrical lines are buried and not on poles, so hopefully power will remain.
Check the air in your tires after the temp drops. If you are not used to such changes in temperature you may be surprised on how low the tire pressure in your tires can get.
In Memphis the snow is supposed to start in about an hour. Then the temps will plunge. As others have said, the major concern is wind and power outages. I’m as prepared for that as I can be.
I’m less stressed now since I managed to get the neighborhood cats in without too much trouble. I got the male in earlier (he’s easy, let’s me pick him up) but the female didn’t show up until about 30 minutes ago. I had only one shot at grabbing her and thankfully it worked. So now we all just wait to see how this progresses.
SE Michigan in a holding pattern for now, The storm is aiming to do a hook around here where the nastiness maybe end up on all three sides while we remain calm and “warm”.
For a little while… We would get a few hours grace at most.
It really is a sobering thought how easily it would have been to get caught up(and die) in a blizzard pre-technology. If this was 1875 and I had say 25 miles to get home for Christmas, I damn well might just head off on my horse without too much worry.
Wound up staying late at work because of all the “Snowzombiepocalypse” customers on top of the pre-Christmas Crazies. The drive home was a bit slick and I drove home at about 20-25 mph in blowing snow. Not deep snow at all, but blowing. Light, fluffy stuff. Stopped to top off the gas tank for just in case.
I’m supposed to be at work at 5 am tomorrow, a glorified grocery store apparently being something essential to civilization (so I was told during the Covid Years). I don’t think the snow will be a huge issue - even if I have to do a bit of shoveling it’s the light n’ fluffy stuff. I’ll probably be able to just drive through what’s out there.
Have my ankle-length down jacket out of storage and the wool socks at the ready. Winter boots ready to go. I’ll probably pack extra socks and gloves when I go out the door. Here’s hoping I can get the truck to start in the cold (usually I can).
That’s a major downside of the current tendency to wildly overhype weather events that aren’t all that unusual. People undoubtedly are more prone to panic buy when faced with “Catastropic WInter Storm Polar Express Beelzebub” as opposed to a conventional storm warning for maybe 4 inches of snow. To get the most clicks and viewers, always list temperatures as wind chills and not actual Fahrenheit.
I’ve found that a really cold outdoor excursion concentrates the canine mind (and bowels) remarkably well.
You have certainly had very different breeds of dog than me. I have a theory that snow angels were transmitted to humans by thick coated dogs going manic in heavy snow and cold weather.
So, the local power company (at least, one of them: Cleveland has two completely separate power companies, with different lines and everything) just sent out an email with preparation tips. One tip was to keep a landline phone handy, as they’ll work even in a power outage. That’d be a good idea, except that the local phone company has completely discontinued POTS around here.
Tried to run errands today given the blizzard warning we have for Thurs night thru Sat morning. Several places were closed due to the cold. Now it’s 6:30 p.m. and the wind chill is -33F. Tomorrow will not be worth exiting the building. I’ve made soup for dinner for the next several days. It smells good. Best of all, it smells warm.
Hehe, I earlier bought a smallish(by modern standards, 6 lb.)pork butt for Carne Adovada Though I was gonna get the adobo marinade done today, but got distracted. So the marinade will be finished, and started tomorrow, and the braise on Saturday I guess. I think I have enough propane to do 8 hours low and slow, if I lose power. It will be more traditional I guess ;
I live in the Detroit metro area. The low 20s or teens is not really that cold for Michigan. Negative windchill is a problem, blizzard conditions are a problem, but we have no plans to go anywhere. Our daycare is closed tomorrow and I already planned a vacation day so it’s just gonna be Family Day. The big thing I’m worried about is 55mph wind knocking out the power, but we have places to go if we lose heat. It would really be an inconvenience, but probably not a tragedy. The worst possible outcome would be frozen pipes. That happened one year and it suuuuuucked. Sleeping with the space-heater tonight in anticipation of that temperature plunge. Hope everyone else stays warm and safe.
Saturday I guess. I think I have enough propane to do 8 hours low and slow, if I lose power. It will be more traditional I guess ;