Musicat, thanks for the info. I had no idea such a thing even existed, and I’ll tell my parents about it. I don’t think their security system covers that (it covers everything else). Sure, when they’re/we’re all out of town someone stops by, but not at night. Very useful.
Good tip River Hippie; the freeze/thaw cycle is worse this year than any other. I’ll get some armor all this weekend. Locks with spray lubricant - like WD40?
Never had trouble with this, though wearing something over your face starts to be a good idea at those temperatures anyways. What is horrifying is the feeling that your eyeballs start to freeze in -50 F windchill or below. Last time we had that sort of weather I saw a bicycling guy wearing swimming glasses - that looked really funny to me, even with me wearing downhill skiing glasses myself. Learned my lesson the morning before that one when my eyesight was going all blurry near the end of my work round.
I also tend to shave my beard and moustache off if it gets really cold, face full of icicles is only funny when it happens to other people.
The fancier, whole-house security systems usually have spare connections – just two terminals, that when shorted, signal that a sensor is telling them something (a normally-closed option is also available that reacts in reverse). This terminal can be connected to any device that closes or opens an electrical circuit when a condition has been met. Pads under carpet that close when stepped on, a switch in a door jamb, window, temperature, moisture, water level, even radiation – just about anything you can dream up. The typical homeowner doesn’t care about most of those, even tho installers should be aware what’s available. Simple sensors aren’t expensive, once you have the main alarm control box in place.
My own experience was with such a system, without any water level or moisture sensors, since I didn’t live in a floodplain or near a body of water then. I was away for a few weeks; a laundry hose broke and flooded the entire house for 10 days. The damn alarm thought everything was as normal as ever. A $50 sensor would have been useful.
Yeah, if you’re driving in a city, there’s usually other cars around and houses to go knock on the door of (I can’t conceive of anyone letting you freeze out in the cold instead of letting you warm up in their house). That said, I still throw my winter boots and a pair of socks and pants in the car whenever I go out in dress clothes. We tend to not go out of town in winter much, either, because winter highway conditions can vary so widely. When we leave on Friday everything’s clear and fine, then when by the time we’re trying to drive home on Sunday, we’ve had a massive snowstorm and all the highways are closed.
My husband is amazed at the difference when he put winter tires on his Tercel this winter. Next winter we’re putting them on the Corolla (no point doing it this year).
The southerners probably don’t even want to think about Canadian winter conditions. They probably don’t want to think about breathing through your nose when you’re walking or running so you don’t freeze your lungs (by breathing through your mouth). Also, your cheeks get so cold that they take a while to come back down again after you smile. 
If you can do it an advance, the real solution is to improve the insulation in your attic, so you don’t have heat escaping to melt the snow. Also helps a lot with the heating bill.
But that can be a major investment, compared with adding the heating cables on the roof.
[QUOTE=Arrogance Ex Machina;13456635 What is horrifying is the feeling that your eyeballs start to freeze in -50 F windchill or below. Last time we had that sort of weather I saw a bicycling guy wearing swimming glasses - that looked really funny to me, even with me wearing downhill skiing glasses myself. Learned my lesson the morning before that one when my eyesight was going all blurry near the end of my work round.[/QUOTE]
Never been cold enough around here for that to happen, but I figured it might be a problem if it did. Yikes.
Dunno that it’s been that cold here either, but if you catch a fierce wind in the face for long enough it starts to feel like your eyeballs are going to pop. Not a pleasant feeling.
I’m sure there are places where the heat is coming from inside and your suggestion would work, but not always. In my case, I have an attic over about 1/3 of the house on the south side, but cathedral ceilings (no attic) on the rest. On days when it is still cold out, but the sun is beating directly down on the south roofs, the melting seems to be about the same on either roof. And on the side of the house without sun, I’ve never known an ice dam to form. Here at least, the contributing factor seems to be more direct sun than lack of insulation. YMMV.
I had to move my car for the snow removal that’s going to happen tonight. The slush under the car had frozen into a pretty nice sheet of ice (could have skated on it), and a car a little further down the way was spinning it’s tires trying to get out. I just got in, put the car in drive and off I went - not a bit of a spin or slip. Presumably the other car also had winter tires, since they are mandatory in Québec, so perhaps that person just didn’t know how to drive or had more ice, but I was pretty happy with how easy it was to get out! Winter/Ice tires are definitely worth it.
I used to have Blizzaks, but got a sale on Yokohama Ice-Guards so that’s what I have now. My car is ancient - this is it’s third set of winter tires!
:: nods ::
I bought my car last fall, and the winter tires were already fitted. I have had no problems driving through the snow and slush on the public roads. I had two little problems on steep and unfavourable driveways, but got myself out of them.
Of course, it helps that my driving philosophy is ‘the best surprise is no surprise’, so I tend to do things gradually. 
However, I maintain that people from Dallas do not have sufficient opportunity to learn to drive on ice.
(And I really think more companies should encourage people to telecommute in bad weather; it’s not just safer for us, it leaves the roads open for people who have to work on site, like nurses and firefighters.)
Found this article about life in Oymyakon that’s kind of relevant. Flinging a cup of hot water into air turns it to snow instantly and stuff. Good read if you ever feel it is ridiculously cold wherever you happen to live. 
A low of 7 isn’t so bad. A high of 7, now that sucks. Even with a block heater, my car doesn’t like starting at -10 or -15F. It does it, but it’s not happy. (It’s a '97 Saturn, so I’m thrilled that it’ll start at all in those temps!) We don’t get cold like that for long but we’ve had two weeklong cold snaps this winter which is unusual. Canada, kindly keep the Arctic air to yourselves!
I moved to winter three years ago August, so this is my fourth winter. Thank God we don’t get ice storms here, we’re too far north. Not that we don’t have ice around, but it tends to be on the ground. I could skate around in front of my house at the moment. My car has never frozen shut, though the lock can be a bit stubborn if it’s really cold. I live in a 60-ish year old log cabin and apparently it was built well because the pipes have never frozen, even during the 16-hour power outage we had overnight on Christmas 2009. Got down to about 0F that night…
I like winter. I like snow. Up to a point (about 15F), I like cold. Yes, it’s a pain sometimes, but I still like it.
Wow, nobody thinks of a laundry hose breaking if you’re not using it. Definitely a helpful tip.
Around here, the borough/municipality lines often bisect a street, so the beginning and end of a street will be plowed with massive drifts in the middle :smack:. Terribly annoying because if they’re the same school district they’re often regarded as the same general area and therefore not thought of as “different” to any resident.
It depends on how far South you go… near the coast, people maintain pantries as well, for hurricanes.
I’m that weirdo who grew up on the coast, and now lives 300 miles inland, and who still has a well stocked pantry good for probably 2 weeks at least.
Sorry, but that’s just not true. I live in Wisconsin and I have a room I don’t heat (it doesn’t have any plumbing in it though) and I DO turn the heat down at night. I open the cupboard doors, I also open the shower curtain and take a couple of things out of the bathroom that restrict warm air-flow to the pipes (which are mounted inside the wall). My house was built to be a 3-season home but I live in it year-round. Heck, I lived in it for 10 years with nothing but a wall furnace in the kitchen and I still turned down the heat at night.
I don’t like to leave water running to keep the pipes open because drains can freeze too.
Well, obviously I can’t speak to everyone in the whole Northern US. There are exceptions. In general, I don’t know many people who turn the heat down so far that pipes will freeze, because… their pipes will freeze!
We have a cabin that’s only rarely used in the winter, and yeah, there’s no heat when people aren’t there. Our solution is we don’t use the plumbing in the winter. There actually is no plumbing in the cabin itself, but the freestanding sauna that’s next to the cabin has a rube goldberg kind of toilet setup. That’s not available in the winter at all. You either hold it or go in the snow.
I don’t do anything special in winter to keep my pipes from freezing; the only time I’d worry about it is if we went away, but we’d either have a housesitter (i.e. my mom) or not turn the heat down too far. Come to think of it, we really don’t travel much in winter; travelling is for summer. People who have cabins and motorhomes (or if someone like a bank has an empty property) are familiar with the winterizing routines - you don’t just walk away from stuff in fall and expect it to still be okay in spring.
High-alcohol beer freezes solid at -22 deg. F. At - 15 deg. F it’s only slushy, but neither tastes good when it thaws.
It was cold on the ski trip that year!