Weather Alerts

[W. Kevin Vicklund]

I'm an electrical engineer, I will be doing this fully to Code. I'm paying an extra $5 to be certain it meets Code. It's overkill, but I don't want there to be any questions. I gotta work with the AHJ for another 20 years.

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We're officially in WTF territory this morning and it's supposed to be like this the next couple of days and then again at the end of the week. According to the HOA I'm supposed to clear the little bit of snow we got off my drive and sidewalk but that's not happening with minus 20 degree wind chills. With the high winds out of the west beating against my garage doors the heat pump in my shop is losing ground so I won't be spending any time out there for a while either. I really miss those gloomy Seattle winters, though I gather it's been pretty cold there lately too.

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[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[northland10]

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[bill_g]

Good kitty.

It's a balmy 18F here in the Willamette Valley. But it's not snaining anymore, and zero wind. Everyone is out unencrusting their carcicles so they can drive to work tomorrow, and making an attempt at clearing their drives and walks. So, that means community gossip time as I walked around clearing street drains. In a couple days this stuff will melt away as fast as it came down. Don't want the streets to turn into lakes. Trying to get ahead of the problem I've seen before.

One neighbor was using a long handle hay fork to bust up the driveway and sidewalk snice (snow+ice). The stuff is really brittle, but it's stuck down like a barnacle. My ice shovel glanced off most of it. I could shave the top but had to leave big chucks in place making the drive an ankle breaker. Salt fixed most of that after an hour. I put more down before I came in for lunch. His hay fork lifted his snice right off in clean sheets. He plowed through with the fork for a couple ten feet, and followed up with a coal shovel to toss it aside. I gotta get one of those.

The neighborhood kids had fun skidding down the hill to the creek. At first they did it in their pants. Some dads came up with lots of heavy cardboard crafted into tobanggans to save on new britches. Those were a hit. Worked pretty good, and sent kids flying at the bottom. Weeeee! No injuries thankfully. Looked like fun. At least a dozen kids doing it.

I checked in on some seniors, swapped stories about frozen bird feeders, gave advice how hot of water to pour on the car to clear the ice, and got lots of love about Mrs. Found someone with the right size feet to take her snowboots which were practically new.

Took some ibuprophen, ate a lunch, and now it's nap time. The cat is pacing wanting me to hurry up. Onward.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

North Little Rock Rock -sleet and ice for 2 hours. Now it is snowing.

[much ado]

Thanks for reminding me why I moved to the California coast.

I spent a winter in Newfoundland. Twenty degrees and high winds. When I first got there, I wondered why all the trees were leaning west, away from the coast. I eventually figured it out.

[Estiveo]

A balmy 60° here today, overnight low around 50°. It's tough.

[Maybenaut]

It was sunny here this morning and cold, then a snow squall moved through and knocked out the power. It was out for just under five hours. We all (us and the cats) retreated to the living room. We closed it off from the rest of the house, and the wood stove kept us nice and toasty. When the power came back on we opened all the doors and the house came back up to temperature pretty quickly.

It is now 26F (feels like 18), and we’re expecting a low of 19F (feels like pretty damned cold). It’s days like today when I’m glad we sweated out in the heat splitting and stacking firewood.

From google street view…

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[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Where are the outside cats, Maybenaut? Have they become insiders?

[Maybenaut]

Where are the outside cats, Maybenaut? Have they become insiders?

Still outside. Ivy has a heated house. White Cat (Snowball didn’t take) comes around every day but we don’t have a house for him (yet). We’re taking a wait-and-see approach to White Cat. We feed him every day, but at one point he was getting pretty aggressive with Ivy. That seems to have calmed down somewhat (Ivy takes no shit off of anyone), but we don’t want to do anything that gives him the impression that he’s the alpha cat because we don’t want him to drive Ivy away from her home.

[Kendra]

Warmed up this afternoon to 30 degrees, but clear and sunny. So many peeps at the car wash, I don't care how dirty my car is, when temps are below freezing, I prefer to avoid that, hate it when doors get frozen shut :/

Going to warm up more next couple of days, but when that happens moisture is due to roll in and it will take a while for the warmer temps to scour out the freezing which could equal SNOW for a while.

[MN-Skeptic]

They had originally predicted 4"-6" of snow for the Twin Cities starting Friday morning. It turned out that dry air moved in from the northwest and kept the snow south and east of us. Iowa got it. Wisconsin got it. We got 1/2". Yay!

Anyway, I waited until today to shovel the bit of snow we had. It was bright and sunny and that makes a difference, even if the wind chill is -15°. I bundled up and split the job in two, coming in when my hands got cold.

I got the insulation in my attic upgraded in 2019 (the old, inadequate insulation was asbestos tainted) and I replaced my 40+ year old furnace in 2021, so my house is pretty well set to handle these cold temperatures.

The one advantage to snow at these cold temperatures - it's fluffy and easy to clear from the driveway. I feel for all you folks with the warmer temperatures who are dealing with sleet and ice. That's just awful.

[northland10]

Tis a balmy -7 F out (that is not wind-chill). The bird feeder is quite the gathering spot this morning. Round 1 driveway snow was wet, heavy, and plowed by the landlord. Round 2 was colder and lighter so easier to shovel (other tenant did the sidewalks before I got moving).

I think we ended up with about 6-8 inches but it is hard to tell as the warmer stuff melted down.

I had to clear some off my car yesterday but that may have been blown snow. After church, I had frost on the windshield, inside my car.

Still, I prefer this to ice and sleet.

[jemcanada2]

Thanks for reminding me why I moved to the California coast.

I spent a winter in Newfoundland. Twenty degrees and high winds. When I first got there, I wondered why all the trees were leaning west, away from the coast. I eventually figured it out.

So you came from away?

[sugar magnolia]

2 dead this morning. One froze to death, one died in a fire.

We are NOT equipped for this weather.

[bill_g]

It's not limited to those areas not used to cold. Two died over the weekend in Portland from hypothermia, and we get ice days every year. That's why I checked some of our seniors. Most of us have heat pumps, but they don't understand they don't work well in cold weather. And in fact their homes could get very cold if they don't manually switch the pump off, and select "emergency heat" only. The thermostat is supposed to do this automatically, but that depends on the model. Mine was never smart enough.

[Maybenaut]

Woke up to 2” of snow. It’s supposed to snow all day, but it’s that really fine stuff. They’re saying a total accumulation of 4”. VDOT has been out salting the roads, and up here on the mountain they also spread fine gravel. We live on a major U.S. Highway; even in 2018 when it snowed three feet the roads here were clear.

I have to drive to Northern Virginia and back (1:40 each way in good weather). I’m performing at a charity gig raising money for a homeless shelter. If it were anything else I’d cancel. But the weather kind of puts it in perspective - I only have to drive in this crap; I don’t have to sleep outside in it.

[much ado]

Thanks for reminding me why I moved to the California coast.

I spent a winter in Newfoundland. Twenty degrees and high winds. When I first got there, I wondered why all the trees were leaning west, away from the coast. I eventually figured it out.

So you came from away?

Yes, we were come-from-aways, or CFAs for short. I was in St. John's on a postdoc at MUN. The future mrs ado joined me there. We had lived together in Michigan, then she left to join the Peace Corps in Africa. She visited me on the way back from Africa. She thought it would be great to live a year in Newfoundland, but she only had a tourist visa. The simplest solution was to get married. So we got married on Friday, November 13th at the Newfoundland Supreme Court building by Judge Roberts. Newfoundland had only recently started allowing civil marriages, so we got asked a lot about that. It was a winter to remember.

[RTH10260]

Houston - we have a problem .....

[Kendra]

Ouch! It didn't happen this year, but search YouTube for Seattle snow fail.

[Maybenaut]

My 1:40 drive to Luray from Reston took over three hours. Blinding snow, lots of cars off the roads, icy conditions. The road I live on is clear, but I-66 and US 340 were both horrible.

My Mustang Mach E is AWD, and it handled pretty well in the snow. The rear window kept icing up, and all the front sensors were iced up so I had to keep my distance. Well, I would have done that anyway - the last thing I need to do is slam on my brakes on an icy road.

I almost forgot the best part! The gig wasn’t a fundraiser. It was entertainment for a hypothermia shelter - folks coming in out of the cold for a hot meal and a little human interaction. My friend and I play a mix of genres, but when we sang the slow songs, folks got up and slow-danced. It was choking me up. It was such an honor to be able to provide a little bit of joy in troubling times. I had a really great time and it was worth the drive.

[Uninformed]

[jemcanada2]

Thanks for reminding me why I moved to the California coast.

I spent a winter in Newfoundland. Twenty degrees and high winds. When I first got there, I wondered why all the trees were leaning west, away from the coast. I eventually figured it out.

So you came from away?

Yes, we were come-from-aways, or CFAs for short. I was in St. John's on a postdoc at MUN. The future mrs ado joined me there. We had lived together in Michigan, then she left to join the Peace Corps in Africa. She visited me on the way back from Africa. She thought it would be great to live a year in Newfoundland, but she only had a tourist visa. The simplest solution was to get married. So we got married on Friday, November 13th at the Newfoundland Supreme Court building by Judge Roberts. Newfoundland had only recently started allowing civil marriages, so we got asked a lot about that. It was a winter to remember.