Yup. Our local grocery store ran out of bread yesterday. Not that I was there buying bread–it was actually ON THE NEWS that some stores had run out of bread and milk. Now that’s ridiculous!
I’d also like to thank the zany, madcap, ridiculous cold snap for freezing the freakin’ water pipes under my house last night and forcing me to spend 4 hours trying to unfreeze them this morning.
Nothing like standing in ankle-deep snow holding a hair dryer against a water pipe while one hand freezes and turns blue and the other one blisters and turns red.
Feh.
I hate weather. :o
Water pipes freezing? What gives? I confess I don’t really understand this, and I come from a rather wintery place. You mean they aren’t buried deep enough to prevent freezing and/or insulated?
Gorsnak - the deeper you want to dig the more expensive it is to do the work. So where it doesn’t get cold very often they tend to lay pipes only deep enough to avoid freezing most years.
Back in '82 or '83 at Christmastime the Fort Worth area had a record breaking number of days below freezing and water <i>mains</i> were breaking.
Well, you’ll have to excuse me, but that’s just stupid and short-sighted. I know that laying pipes deeper costs more, but it costs a heck of a lot less than digging them back up to replace them after they freeze solid and split themselves open when you don’t lay them deep enough. “Most years” just doesn’t cut it.
Blah. I hate false economy. Saving now at the expense of tomorrow is far, far too common these days.
I got the impression, though, that these were regular plumbing lines in a unheated crawlspace or something, though. Here the appropriate measure should be an insulating wrap. I suppose someone might want to economize there if it wouldn’t cause a problem more than once or twice a decade, so long as there was no significant risk of things freezing hard enough to split lines open.
It was down to about 7 here last night. Today, up to a balmy 25. My sister’s been in town visiting from Orlando, where they consider 50 unimaginably cold; I must say she’s been a real trooper about all this.
Well, here in SC we aren’t used to temperatures of 9 degrees, which is how cold it was last night. It hasn’t been that cold in years. This is the Deep South not the Arctic Circle. This type of weather is very rare here.
Our pipes have never frozen before and yes, they are partly buried except for one small segment which was the part that froze despite the fact it was well-insulated. I took all the precautions–leaving the faucet trickling, opening the cabinet doors under the sinks, etc, but for all my efforts the pipes still froze.
It may have been “stupid and short-sided” if I lived in oh, say, Minnesota perhaps, but not in SC.
9F isn’t cold. I don’t think it’s gotten up to 9F here in the past two weeks. By stupid and short-sighted, I meant burying lines to an insufficient depth as described by Zyada. This is short-sighted regardless of where you are, though what counts as an insufficient depth will vary with location. It is very stupid, given the inevitable eventuality of colder than normal temperatures causing a need for very expensive repairs.
However, I didn’t mean to imply that you yourself had been short-sighted in this way. I asked the original question because I was just honestly confused. I never hear of lines freezing around here, and it’s not for lack of nights at -40.
Don’t remind me about freezing pipes! Last Sunday night my upstairs neighbor’s pipes froze which means when I stumbled to the kitchen for a drink at 5 in the morning, I heard the sound of running water coming from the living room! Fortunately the worst that happened to me was a damp corner in one corner of the living room and icicles on my balcony (in this building, the water heaters are in closets on the balconies), but his pipes burst. He hadn’t insulated them enough, but it made for an exciting morning.
There are rumours about that the temperature might actually get above freezing next week but I don’t believe them. And to think my friends with the hot tub are in Maine!!
Thanks for the offer, MrVisible, but I’ll stay here nice and warm in two sweaters and nice fuzzy slippers. Now, if that hot tub were a bit closer . . . .
It should also be remembered that in many places in the South, the water table is much higher than it is elsewhere. I have, I believe, never seen a basement in a house. Digging far down, therefore, can be much more expensive and less practical here than elsewhere.
Our pipes didn’t freeze, though. Although I did have to run to the hardware store to get insulation for the outside spigots.
I think the reason the cold wave is ridiculous is that it often isn’t this cold for this long in this general area. I can’t remember a winter where it was this cold for more than a week, after which it got back up above freezing (only to plummet again later, true, but still).
I enjoy cold weather and all, but this is just ridiculous.
The weather has gone mad, yesterday my town of Melbourne hit the second highest temperature in recorded history. My cat and I truly hope that the 43.9C / 111.02F was a once in a lifetime event for this temperate town. If I wanted that I would move inland or just north. If this continues I am moving to Tasmania.
Except that Cecil doesn’t write Staff Reports – that particular effort was by SDSTAFF Ken.
Here in North Carolina they’ve been running film of people sledding down the sand dunes along the Outer Banks, which got its first significant snowfall in 13 years. And it’s cold for a city like Raleigh, which doesn’t require landlords to have heaters in their apartments.
I’ve been hearing some of the news stories about the cold weather in the States, and while I have sympathy for the Southerners who don’t know how to deal with it (aren’t prepared for it because it comes so rarely, etc.), I have to wonder at places like New York being astonished at having cold weather in winter. I mean, doesn’t it get cold every winter in places that aren’t too far south of Canada?
(Although, for the record, even the newscasters here in Calgary are guilty of making news stories out of normal weather - “And today in Canada in mid-January, we had COLD WEATHER and SNOW!!!” Wow, that sure is news.
A couple of things about New York. New York City is right on the ocean, so usually that moderates temperatures. In an average winter, we do get to single digits at least once - but usually it’s only for a day or two, and it goes away. This year’s stretch of below freezing days - 12 as of today - is, I believe, the third or fourth longest on record. And the fact that the last two winters have hardly been winters at all makes the contrast all the more noticeable.
The other factor about NYC is that we have the lowest car ownership percentage of just about anywhere in the country, so we tend to be out in the cold more. I went to college in Minnesota, and I know the routine there: heated garage, heated car, semi-heated parking ramp, heated skyway, heated office, repeat as necessary. Ain’t no such thing here.
It’s been below 10°F here quite a bit as well. While I can understand people complaining about it, I know that there are certainly worse places. And I’m from Alabama originally. I myself love the cold, and I was enjoying the ridiculous wave very much, until I found out there has been at least one death due to it. It seems to be changing, though; I went out tonight and was almost sweating under my heavy coat. Apparently it’s 24°F. Bah!
On Thursday they cancled school because it was too cold (-24 with a wind chill, I think), and today was the warmest day in the past few weeks, at 22 degrees.
By stupid and short-sighted, I meant burying lines to an insufficient depth as described by Zyada. This is short-sighted regardless of where you are, though what counts as an insufficient depth will vary with location. It is very stupid, given the inevitable eventuality of colder than normal temperatures causing a need for very expensive repairs.