| Author | Message | ||
     86129squids |
My sweetie JUST started her new job today- been hoping that they'd let folks go home early, looks like that will not be the case... She won't have too long a commute, most of the roads getting her home will be salted, BUT- she HAAATES driving in this stuff, gets a little too worked up... Bad thing is, all I have is an old Nissan pickup and two motorcycles. I COULD drive to get her, but it'd still be extra sucky. Folks, STAY SAFE! Vern, IIRC, your hunny only has to make 2 right turns with a straight road in the middle to get home... hope all remains well out there! | ||
| Etennuly |
Thanks Brad, Hope ya'll are safe also. I just drove to town and back, it is not bad now, but what is happening will make it worse. It warmed up a little and is raining steady on top of the ice now. This development is washing all of the salt off from the roads. About ten thirty the temps are supposed to drop towards the single digits. It will be a skating rink overnight and into the morning for sure and then the salt will not work because the temperature will be too low. Being from Northern Pa. the wife and I grew up driving on snow. She is driving her AWD Durango tonight. Her problem is it hooks up well and makes her over confident. When it goes good from a start she forgets that it may not turn or stop as good. I feel for the people in Boston with six feet of snow on their lawns and streets. We bitch about an inch of ice here like it was a big deal. Well, from my experience nearly everybody can learn to drive on snow.....nearly nobody can drive on clear smooth ice without chains or studs. Years back I wrecked one of my snomobiles at 85 mph. It had a rubber track with no studs I was running on snow covered back road where with limited visibility at night, I found a long patch of ice that the wind had blown the snow off and polished it nicely. It started spinning and went sideways. A short time later I was hopping around on one foot looking for my one boot, sock, gloves and contents of the underseat storage compartment and then I had to find the sled, it was about fifty feet away buried in a snow drift. My point is.....snow ~ poor to good traction.....ice ~ no traction even on a snow mobile. | ||
| 86129squids |
 I pulled down my sled- heck, I really should post pics of it like everyone else does for their bikes and cars and stuff- I managed to live my life and survive childhood without destroying this thing! It REALLY is the fastest sled. | ||
| Etennuly |
It is getting interesting. They are saying at this hour that 10,000 homes in the area are temporarily without power. Most homes around here are all electric, as is mine. I have seen the power flash off several times, luckily it has come back on here each time so far. Ice on trees take down power wires. I don't envy the crews out in the freezing rain/sleet charged with keeping the power on. My hat is off to them. I have a generator to back me up. It is not only a worry about primary heat but our entire water system is protected by electric heat tapes(typical in Tennessee). Too cold too long can be bad. We are headed to eleven degrees tonight. We can move into the motorhome to stay warm if needed. Really hoping the power stays on.  | ||
| Pwnzor |
Check out the tree in the front yard... all the branches used to go sort of... up.. instead of down....  | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
Monday night I drove down from VA through NC & SC into GA. Via 81,77,& 85. Fully freighted driving a kW t660 with just one driven axle. Took me 9h30 go 375 miles, most of it with the diflock engaged. Thank goodness for winter tyres, much experience and huge cojones. Saw lots of wrecks and many trees and cables down. Currently in florida 71°f at 1am, I'll take it! | ||
| 86129squids |
Be safe, Grumps, and get some good seafood whilst you can down in FL. Damn I'm ready for SPRINGTIME!!!! | ||
| Bartimus |
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| Crusty |
Bartimus; that's a very valid question. One that I will address this year. Next winter, I plan to be in the Southern Hemisphere. | ||
| Akbuell |
Grumps- Good on yah! Stay safe. Back when I lived in Alaska, a state trooper was asked about his retirement plan. It had 2 parts. First, he was going to buy a box of snow shovels, and was going to head south with them until he was asked "What are those?" He was going to live there until the whole box of them was sold, then he was going to move further south. | ||
| 86129squids |
GREEEAAAT. Not only are we still positively frozen over, we're now getting a couple of inches of new snow! Wind is blowing, plus we'll see lows near zero tonite and tomorrow nite. So far I've lost a week of work due to pink-eye and crappy weather, and it won't get above freezing til Saturday. Craptastic.  Oh well- sometime when it gets the coldest I'll try that stunt where you throw a pan of boiling water up in the air, never done that before. Gotta love the cheap thrills, all about the $hits and giggles. (Message edited by 86129squids on February 18, 2015) | ||
| Etennuly |
One of my sons lives about ten miles from us. His power was out for nine hours yesterday. Fortunately he has a propane powered fireplace. Problem is the distribution fans are electric. So they had one warm room. We have been lucky with just a few power off flashes. Several of my pine trees have lost a lot of limbs. I tried to break some of the ice from the limbs but that just breaks the needles and limbs. The snow on top of the ice has taken them right to the ground. Kind of a pisser, the wife and I planted these trees ten to fifteen years ago and they were just reaching towards a nice mature size. On the brighter side the trees are quite beautiful when the sun hits them with the ice on them. It looks like they are made of glass crystal. I'm going to get some pictures soon. | ||
| 86129squids |
Vern, I've been watching the trees and been VERY wary of the winds today- gladly, it looks like things have calmed down by now. Frozen trees with a fresh dusting of snow, then winds...  NOT looking forward to the overnite temps the next few days. Doubt I'll be working until next week- going out for a gourmet dinner aint too high on folk's to do lists here lately. | ||
| Etennuly |
These pines are going to be skinny topped with fat hips now, there are a few sprigs at the top, and just the two bottom layers of limbs that bottomed out on the ground, survived. Mid tree up they have otherwise broken off.  Frozen Willow.  We are supposed to hit -1F tomorrow morning with 25 mph winds. Just heard on the news that many thousands of folks are still without power, and will be for a few more days. One time while working overnight at the ski resort in 1977~78 making snow, the temperature dropped from cold, -5F, to really cold, -20F with incredible wind gusts. My partner and I got done with our twelve hour shift where we were outside the entire night to keep the equipment moving, to be told the resort could not open because a blizzard had moved in where the cold and wind made it too dangerous to ski. That was the only day I can recall that daylight never came, it stayed pitch black dark all day even when the snow was not falling sideways. I then had to ride my snomobile home. | ||
| Sifo |
Forecast for picking up school kids in the morning is for -8 with a -28 windchill. Schools burned through their allotted snow days earlier in the year closing schools for the cold when it was warmer. I guess it's time for the kids to HTFU. Of course there is the issue of will the diesel buses start in that weather. They burned up their fuel budget last year running them 24/7 for a couple of weeks. This year they don't allow any idling for more than 5 minutes. Could make for an interesting morning. I just hope not too many kids get frostbite waiting for a bus that is close to an hour late because the mechanics are backed up with a bunch of bussed that wont fire. At least we haven't had any significant snow for a couple of weeks. They promised us global warming!  | ||
| Aesquire |
Last year I blamed Disney. it's sympathetic magic.... Like blaming Al Gore, Punxsutawney Phil, or the Rankin-Bass Christmas movies. But, Disney's cranked out "Big Hero Six", a truly great movie, it certainly isn't the Ground Hog's fault, and who doesn't love stop motion? I propose we turn all the windmills into fans and blow some air around! I've had it with political human control geo-engineering to combat Climate Change. Let's Go with.......... Master the freaking Weather! Between HARP, Soviet Weather Weapons, and brute force Rocket Punk technology, we can end this Eternal Winter And Save Mankind! We'll put up solar power satellites, send up millions of orbital mirrors and make the deserts bloom, steer Hurricanes away from cities, and melt my Freaking Driveway! Of course we'd probably screw it all up and make ourselves extinct.... | ||
| 86129squids |
Not a bad idea. In relative time measurement, I'll be extinct real soon. Whilst here, I hope to do right by the folks I know, and to add to their journey in our time forward. Self, our selves, et cetera, blahblah... Give forward. If you survive, jump forward- and into a bath of springwater, olio, semantics, and the dawn of the next day. | ||
| Ratbuell |
-5 ambient this morning at home. Dogs were out less than 2 minutes and were favoring their paws lime they'd stepped on glass. They're back indoors now. My Cummins dodge has a new cold front mask. Zero inches of exposed radiator... It still won't get over 140 degrees on the temp gauge. Its warmer than that on the block heater!! Although that same block heater had my garage at a balmy 36 degrees this morning when I headed out... And, 8-12" of snow coming tomorrow. Guess I'll fill up on diesel at lunch. | ||
| 86129squids |
Joe- don't know if they'd tolerate wearing them, but there are little dawgie boots available for crap weather like this. Modern sled dogs wear them... If anyone needs to shop for a dog sweater, the best one made is called Fido Fleece- great quality and design, much more so than most I've seen! A company called BaxterBoo markets them. Had one for years for my Basenji- my little Jack HaHa is wearing his right now! | ||
| Aesquire |
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/21/eastern-u-s- record-breaking-cold-and-snow-as-seen-from-space/ | ||
| Ratbuell |
I've tried sweaters - the dogs team up and tear them off each other so they can be used as chew-toys. And good as the idea is...booties wouldn't fly. My pug doesn't even like me to TOUCH her feet, I think if I tried to put socks on them she'd have a heart attack! | ||
| Griffmeister |
I don't know what's worse, the cold or the little tease nature gives you every now and then. Seems the last few weeks every day started in the single digits with snow every few days. Last night it was 17f and snowing. Today, sun shining and over 40f by midday. All I could think about was the bike, and all I could see was slush, standing water and stubborn ice patches on the roads. Of course tomorrow it's back to below freezing. Curse you mother nature. | ||
| Crusty |
By this time tomorrow night, the temperature is supposed to fall below zero. Oh, joy. | ||
| Aesquire |
We made it all the way up to 28 deg. F!!!! Yeah! Next week is all freaking cold again. The good news is pothole season doesn't really kick in until we get the daily freeze/thaw cycles, which has been a big part of winters past locally. So it will be at least another week before Kias vanish into the underworld. Maybe longer. OTOH several local towns have run out of salt and are rationing it, with the usual increase in accidents. Yes, I have a low opinion of local drivers. In fact I'm constantly astonished so few kill themselves. At least that is a positive outlook on life. | ||
| Etennuly |
That second round of ice storms Saturday/Sunday took out power to over 25,000 homes, many for the second time. A lot of them will be without power for another week. This storm loaded trees with more ice, though it had not all melted off from the first round, to have very high wind gusts. Trees are down all over the area North of Knoxville. The power company rep said that the lines being down are not the hard part, the trees caused hundreds of power poles to snap off. It takes time to set new poles. They have power company trucks from all over the region working on it. In our neighborhood the weather guys said the snow and ice accumulation would be all gone by Sunday. They were not quite accurate about that.We still have over an inch of slush that is re-freezing for today. Secondary roads are still slush covered and the fields are still covered with an ice and snow layer. | ||
| No_rice |
You guys and your so called "winter storm"... lol. Jenn and I just got back from a trip. Snowmobiling in -30 before windchill, and not including the anywhere from 30-100mph we were riding at! We had another great vacation! | ||
| Etennuly |
Winter storm here means something completely different that what is North or West. When you have 25,000 homes with out power, without water, the roads are covered in an ice that you cannot walk on let alone drive, power lines are down crossing the roads so you can't go anyways, this is for a week at a time no less, it is a far worse thing than a blizzard that dumps four feet of snow in Western New York State. People have been getting dead because of hypothermia in their homes. They could not get out and no one could get in. Rescue folks can not get up roads that are steep and covered in ice, even if they could get up there they have to turn back because of trees down and or wires down across the roads. I spent the first half of my life in NW Pa an SW NY state. I did the snomobile thing, the ski resort job thing, and thought that winter here was a joke until I moved here. I never felt the need to own a four wheel drive until I moved here. You could put studded winter tires or chains on your 4x4 to drive on the iced roads, but that'll just get you run over by the semi drivers who think it is no big deal to drive through here in the winter storms. They have been wrecking all over the area, in doing so they keep running over cars. Just the other day two four wheel drive vehicles collided head on about three miles down the road from my place. Only one of the drivers died. The secondary roads around here are steep and narrow, most with no guard rails. The DOT can't get there to plow or salt them because they are busy on the main roads that they will lay down salt or brine to have the temperature warm up two degrees changing a snow event to rain that washes the salt off, a couple hours later the temps drop below freezing again and the crews are out spreading salt but can't get everywhere again fast enough. The next day it rains again then freezes again. It is a bitch to get balance here. The weather can change every fifteen minutes here between freezing or not freezing with ice being the uncontrollable factor between. At least where winter really happens, even to -30F, it gets cold and stays cold, you have a fairly stable situation. | ||
| Aesquire |
You have a point. I lived for years in South Dakota. Siberian cold but everyone is used to it. In the spring they take down the heavy ropes you stretch from house to garage to barn to outhouse. You need the ropes to get from one to the other when not if the visibility goes to zero with high winds. Normal. Up here in western N.Y. only the crazy & service people are out in that and it's rare. Down in the hills where you are this weather is a disaster. To be fair it seems like every idiot forgets how to drive every winter......repeatedly during each winter. Down south they never learned. | ||
| Davefl |
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| Nillaice |
timbersleds are the solution http://www.timbersled.com/ |
