Amigo, It's Cold Outside


 
J Hasselberger

J Hasselberger

TVWBB All-Star
It was 7° this morning in Texas Hill Country. It snowed about 5 inches overnight. There might be one snow plow within 5o miles of here. The Hays County Sheriffs Department issued a blunt post: "Before you call us, understand that we can't get to you. Nearly all the roads are impassable." Texas leads the nation in wind power, but all the turbines are frozen still. As a result, the grid is subject to rolling blackouts. We are ready for flash floods and hurricanes, but this has totally incapacitated us. Just about every business is closed, including the food stores (and Franklin Barbecue). This started last Wednesday and we won't see above freezing temps until this Wednesday. Last time this happened was in the 1980s. On the upside, it is easy to keep your beer cold.

Jeff

Frozen Prickly Pear

ice cactus by Jeff Hasselberger, on Flickr

Buzz, our mailbox mascot could use some nice warm deer guts

Ice Buzz 2 by Jeff Hasselberger, on Flickr
 
I have had some strange weather in my area as well. It is not unusual for us to get 20s and low teens all winter long and to have snow by late october and stay till late february early march. However this year we didn't have any real snow till about mid december which was actually kind of nice. It's also not unusual for us to get 12+ inches overnight, but we have the plows to be able to handle it. Binghamton New York, which is about 3 hours east of me got 4 feet overnight!! I'm extremely glad that we did not get that where I'm at I can tell you that much
 
I think we struggled up to 4° today, with snow last night, all day long, into tonight. It's hard to measure with all of the wind moving it around.
Air fryer got used again tonight, crockpot tomorrow.

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Wanted to add, we have plenty of snowplows, but with this powder snow and wind they can't keep the roads cleared.
 
What gives? By Tuesday afternoon it is going to be 45 F here on the East coast of Canada and raining. Then it is going back into the deep freeze and there will be ice everywhere. I wish it would just stay Cold and no rain! 🥶
 
Hope you all get through safe and sound. We tried to man the front lines and take the brunt of it up here before it got down to you folks, but there was simply too much for even us to suck up!! Sorry we let it get through to you!
 
Cold is just the body's perceived interpretation of the temperature, it's subjective and I am used to it. But this actual reading from my truck thermometer (not wind chill) was pretty damn cold one morning around 05 in the AM not too long ago. Living at just under 10,000 feet, I regularly see temps -20 and lower, but this was the coldest I have ever experienced:

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Texas is not prepared for this weather. Something needs to change. Seriously. It is about 0F out there and we have had no electricity for about 14 hours today. It just came back on again at 1:30 am in the morning and I have no idea for how long. It is a disaster how this has been handled today and it probably is not over yet. I just hope my pool equipment has survived.
 
Stefan H said:
Texas is not prepared for this weather. Something needs to change. Seriously. It is about 0F out there and we have had no electricity for about 14 hours today. It just came back on again at 1:30 am in the morning and I have no idea for how long. It is a disaster how this has been handled today and it probably is not over yet. I just hope my pool equipment has survived.
Click to expand...

You're not far from me. I feel fortunate we've had no loss of electricity, just our water went out Sunday from freezing at the water treatment plant. We have been warned about potential rolling blackouts.

We did not have these problems in Dec 1983, when we went into the deep freeze for about 2 weeks. I don't recall a lot of sub zero temps then, but it was plenty cold, a lot of single digits. We did not have any worries about electricity or nat gas. IDK what has changed in 40 years.

This is a rarity, but its not like it has never happened before. Here in OKC, from Christmas to mid January, we can get these arctic fronts that move in and stay for a while, like a week or so. The only thing unusual about this one, is its February.

I got a lot of questions that I will probably never get answered.
 
Barb and I will keep all of you in our thoughts and hopefully this will end soon. Here in AZ nothing is creating weather problems for us. Got up a 6am this morning and it was 42F, which is about 20F above normal for this time of the year. Crazy times we are living through. Stay safe.
 
We just got electric back, was down for an hour. If that's all there is to these rolling black outs, I can adjust to it. Its -12 outside , house was at 68* when it started , it got down to 63* by my Thermopen.

I still have a lot of questions. I've lived around the oil field for 68 years and I've never heard of nat gas wells freezing to the point of causing supply disruption. And nat gas goes into storage, it does not go directly to the utility. It comes up out of the ground with oil , or sometimes with just what's called nat gas liquids, and it has to be separated. In that process water is produced, so the possibility is there. But it was not long ago we had so much nat gas the producers could not give it away. This is befuddling.
 
Lynn, look at a 20 lb. LP gas grill tank. Down at these low temperatures, the LP liquid won't boil off (or at least, not sufficiently,) enough run a grill or burner. The grain drying systems I grew up with drew liquid out of the bottom of a 1,000 gallon LP pig, and looped it through a vaporizer tube right in front of the burner, as natural boil-off was not enough to run the big burners. Natural gas will have similar characteristics, albeit different temperatures & pressures. I would expect that the problems you're referring to are within a few feet of the surface. It takes a very long time (years,) of low temperatures to extend more than a short distance underground.

It got colder here than expected, my weather station said -27 F around 0700 this morning.
 
No where near that cold here, only 8* when I went out to blow the 8” of light fluffy snow in the driveway. The plow snot at the end was unpleasant but, I managed to move it out. What usually takes fifteen minutes was a 45 minute project and I was very happy to get inside and have that second cup of coffee!
 
Here is a good article from last week and TX is mentioned with the nat gas pipes freezing and being shut down which of course impacts supply. Stay safe everyone its 23 in the ATL which is nothing like what most of you are experiencing but with my blood thinned from living here so long might as well be zero.

www.claimsjournal.com

U.S. Cold Blast So Extreme Gas Pipes Are Starting to Freeze

The unprecedented Arctic blast that has gripped the U.S. for much of the week has paralyzed natural gas pipelines, brought deadly ice storms to Houston
www.claimsjournal.com www.claimsjournal.com
 
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