Chocolates and Irish Whiskey sound like a wonderful reward for enduring that indignity.
Thanks for the good wishes. We moved to WV from AZ less than a year ago. We are Retired Drains On Society who don’t have to be anywhere on a schedule.
I just checked the temp gauge and it is 3F. I went outside. It was not just cold, it was cold! I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold in my life, it felt like a bunch of needles straight into my skin. I came back inside and don’t have a reason to go back out until Thursday, so I won’t.
That’s quite a change of environments! It has not been this cold here for a while and it typically doesn’t last long thankfully. I don’t like it at all.
Not having a schedule makes dealing with this a lot easier. Stay warm inside.
I saw a message I’ve never seen before on one of those highway message signs today in Minnesota. It ominously said Car off road? / Stay in vehicle. In other words, don’t start walking somewhere in this cold.
I have a high-efficiency woodburning fireplace insert that keeps most of the house toasty warm. It does have a blower motor to distribute the heat, so if the furnace and the electricity go out I have a generator. So I could wait out a few day deep freeze with furnace and / or electric failure.
Worst case, if all of that fails and is not fixed for more than a few days I have blankets and sleeping bags. I also have a credit card which could buy a nice hotel room (hopefully with a heated pool).
This house has six fireplaces (five of them I’d say are safe to operate), and plenty of wood (either artificial logs or wood lying in the yard). It does trigger my asthma so I’d as soon not, but it’s an option.
Imagining the media Winter Storm Warning Catastrophic Cold hysteria in Houston, where in addition to a predicted 3-5 inches of snow today, it’s supposed to get down to 22F tonight (lower in outlying areas). Residents are getting conflicting advice on whether to let their faucets drip to prevent pipe freezes (insulation is a foreign concept in many homes). The city helpfully is warning people NOT to do that, because the system is full of water main leaks and can’t handle a mass of dripping faucets.
Its 5 right now. It will briefly reach 10, then by midnight 0.
Worried about the wind. Not that I’m going out, but about the power.
It went off one night in Dec. And I’ve been afraid ever since.
Our end of the building had heat and dim lights, the other end nothing.
But it was above freezing that night.
What if the pipes go? Who do we call if its flooding? Most here don’t have cars.
They say wind chills at 6 am will be 25 below.
If it helps any, the NOAA 8-14 day long range forecast* predicts subnormal temperatures only for most of New England and a sizable chunk of the Southwest. Elsewhere they expect normal or above normal temperatures.
*these forecasts tend to be reasonably accurate. With the ones projecting out to 3 months, might as well just roll the dice.
I haven’t been out yet today, but I see it is 16. We were in northern Vermont over the weekend for our daughter’s graduation, and it was in the single digits when we left for the airport. It didn’t seem horrible, but we weren’t outside for very long.
That’s what the neighbors have been saying. It was 8F when I got up and has since gotten to 14F.
I figured out I do have a reason to go outside. The hungry birds have found the plate of offerings I put out and keep emptying it. I’ve run out of peanuts and the walnuts are getting low.
This is one of the coldest days in Toronto that I’ve ever experienced…well, there may have been worse but I’m really feeling it today. Wind chill minus 24 this morning as I was coming in to work. And to top it off, the rads in my apartment are barely putting any heat out, so I’m wondering if the boiler is pooched.
It’s about 1F here where I’m at in the Cleveland area. Got up and went to tai chi class like normal. It hasn’t snowed in a couple days so the roads are fine. It’s sunny out.
I just got a new furnace in November, and my mom got one over the summer, so I feel confident in our ability to stay warm. We don’t get many power outages in our neighborhood, knock on wood.
-1F here overnight, says the max/min thermometer. Not much wind, though, and the house feels warmer than it did last week when the temperature and the wind were both a good bit higher. This is an old and leaky house; it has a whole lot more insulation now than it did when it was built, but it still has a lot of the same windows.
However, the new NOAA coding system is correct: this is on the colder end of normal seasonal weather for this area, that’s all. They say, if you’re going out, put on a coat and hat and gloves. Yeah, duh. But this is why we don’t have as many insect problems as the South does.
The (relatively thin-coated) dog and three of the four cats have been alternating going out and coming back in to toast by the stove. The fourth cat’s not going out in this, no way, she says.
Yeah. I went out and did some things when it was 12 degrees and found it almost pleasant, compared to just a little while back when it was a little warmer, but way windier.
We hit -24F at the house yesterday morning (Bozeman MT so this is not unexpected). The dogs were very efficient during their “out” time in the morning. In the afternoon, I put their coats on to go down the long driveway a bit - sorry, that’s all the exercise you’re getting, boys! Up to 10F this morning, so into the coats and on the trail by 8:30. It’s now in the mid-20s but howling wind/blowing snow. Pretty normal winter conditions but we weren’t really in the vortex anyway. Stay warm, everyone!
I used to live in Lafayette, Louisiana. One day they predicted some snow. They went crazy, shutting down the schools, etc. We got three or four flakes.
Today it snowed over six inches there. The Weather Channel had a reporter on Pinhook Road, not far from where my wife used to work.
A blizzard in SW Louisiana. And some people say climate change is a hoax.
Me, I’m going to start a business selling snow shovels to Cajuns. And I hope the gators didn’t freeze.
