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The weather in Michigan is...


Str8-8-Dave

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frightful!  We were led to believe we might get 7-9" in Port Huron.  We actually live 5-6miles west of the St. Clair River/Lake Huron shoreline but I'm gonna guess we might have gotten a bit more than that.  I've been working on my 31 Buick coupe for a while now, it came to our house in April of 2018 and went on jack stands almost immediately thereafter.  I thought about letting the old gal down and taking her out for a test drive today but, umm, maybe I will wait a bit...

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I have a daughter in Austin TX and have spent time on the phone trying to keep her and her house safe.  They have zero degree weather, snow, high winds in houses designed for hot weather.  Example- they have neither freeze-proof outdoor faucets or a shutoff valve inside the house.  If the local hardware store or Home Depot had heat tapes she couldn't go there because she says the roads are impassable and the city of Austin doesn't own a snow plow.  Many parts of TX have rolling power outages due to the high loads imposed by weather conditions which she is escaping because she is on a section of grid that services the local fire station.  She has friends with young kids who haven't had power in 36hrs...  

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13 minutes ago, Str8-8-Dave said:

I have a daughter in Austin TX and have spent time on the phone trying to keep her and her house safe.  They have zero degree weather, snow, high winds in houses designed for hot weather.  Example- they have neither freeze-proof outdoor faucets or a shutoff valve inside the house.  If the local hardware store or Home Depot had heat tapes she couldn't go there because she says the roads are impassable and the city of Austin doesn't own a snow plow.  Many parts of TX have rolling power outages due to the high loads imposed by weather conditions which she is escaping because she is on a section of grid that services the local fire station.  She has friends with young kids who haven't had power in 36hrs...  

 

Dave just have them leave the faucets on slightly to allow movement of the water

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+1 on a slow drip to keep outside faucet from freezing. It works.

 

Had a house in Texas that every time there was a hard freeze, the water in the house would stop. Finally figured out that when the attic installation was blown in, it all fell between the rafters. And the pipes ran over the rafters...

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4 minutes ago, John348 said:

 

Dave just have them leave the faucets on slightly to allow movement of the water

 

That will help keep the exposed outdoor pipes from freezing.

The city of New Orleans has also advised residents to do that in the past, but only a pencil-thin, or even a spaghetti-thin stream of water.

 

Unfortunately, when enough folks do that (letting the water run), water pressure drops city-wide, and a couple of other problems rear their ugly head:

1.      Bacteria invade the water supply, resulting in a BOIL WATER" emergency

2.     Not enough water pressure to fight fires, sometimes caused when folks haven't been cautious in trying alternate heat sources

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20 minutes ago, Marty Roth said:

2.     Not enough water pressure to fight fires, sometimes caused when folks haven't been cautious in trying alternate heat sources

That reminds me of a story from a co-worker during the last great east coast power outage (we worked in emergency services) The press called him looking for information on a house fire that occurred during the outage - his immediate reply "We've ruled out electrical...."

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Another ice storm forecast here for Thursday with possible 1/2" accretion which will be bad news for power outages. One for line sag and broken power poles, two because ground is so saturated now that trees will probably uproot completely from added ice weight instead of limbs breaking.

 

Looked at my trees this morning. Three of my four elms have ice storm damage from Saturday's ice and expect to lose one, maybe two of them completely.

 

Some areas still don't have power restored from Saturday. Can't imagine what y'all living in areas that have never dealt with this much winter are going thru.

 

Tired of winter... 🥶

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Please.........snow this, freezing rain that, I want you to know it’s not all Champagne & Caviar here in Palm Beach.........I got sand in my flip flops at the beach today! 😏

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4 minutes ago, JayG said:

You’ll be shaking sand out of more than your sandals when the next Cat 4  hits.   I’ll take the snow. 


Let it hit.......we are 26 feet above sea level, and the building is rated for 240mph. My house? It will be in the inter coastal.........all the good stuff is in the shop. And we can hold up for 30 days without issue. 
 

Now.....for the big question.......Ever see hot women walking down the sidewalk in a thong bikini while your shoveling the sidewalk?

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This beautiful girl was just walking her dog in the foot of snow we have here in Long Island, New York, and we have 8 - 12 inches more coming on Thursday...

She WAS in a beautiful thong bikini, I couldn't believe it....

 

I asked (in these coronavirus times), if I could pet her dog...

She said "sure, he's friendly".

 

I asked her if she had ever heard of Zsa Zsa Gabor and Johnny Carson ?????

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Here in London Ontario we had a nasty Lake Huron snow streamer effect storm and -12 C. My 63 GT Hawk is sitting blocked in by a drift and the battery is too weak to start it. The F150 Harley truck has the heater blend door stuck in the cold position so it's out. The GMC Z71 is frozen solid and wouldn't start for the 1st time ever!

Had to rely on the Mini Cooper to get thru the drifts!

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3 hours ago, Oldsmobile 83 said:

Here in Rochester, MN we didn't have any new snow or ice to deal with but, we were COLD, down to -20F this morning and -23oF yesterday morning.

So just about this time of year in about 1975 or so I went on a company cold weather test trip in which we traveled from Dearborn, MI to Bemidgee, MN over the course of 2 days in the damndest English Transit vans, all 2 rear wheel drive, all automatic trans, one 2.3L gas, one 2.2L indirect injected diesel, one 2.0L direct injected diesel.  The testing was to evaluate severe cold weather defroster performance.  Somewhere west of Marquette, MI on M-28 which was 4 lane undivided highway, on a very cold snowy morning, the Ford of England manager who had traveled to the US to participate in the trip from Trafford House in jolly old England, had an unfortunate experience with the direct injected diesel van.  You see, the accelerator pedal was a mis-nomer, it was an ON/OFF switch that basically either put the engine to sleep idling or was WFO (F not for family hour consumption).  On that slippery section of 28 he touched the throttle on a slippery spot, then made about 5 donut circles from the right lane of westbound 28 across 4 lanes to the ditch next to the right eastbound lane of 28 where it stopped on about a 35 degree angle.  We were all young kids then so we alternated between having a free-for-all snowball fight to digging that stupid red van out of the ditch.  The good manager's pants were so full of tripe he could not drive more than 10 mph after that little performance so the US trip leader had to take over the driving so we could get to breakfast and then on to Bemidgee.

 

Testing consisted of parking the 3 vans side by side facing into a 30mph west wind just outside the fence at the Bemidgee airstrip and installing some thermocouples to monitor ambient air temp, cowl inlet temp, engine water temp, breath level temps, floor level temps and discharge air temps at the floor and defroster ducts.  About 6 AM a mechanic carefully cleaned the windshield then using a Binks spray gun put a uniform 0.050" film of ice on the windshields.  A piece of mylar film was attached to the inside of the windshield so every 5 minutes the open areas of the windshield could be traced with a magic marker(the defroster pattern). The engines were not run overnight until the test started at 7 AM.  the drill was get in the van, shut the doors and sit tight for 10 minutes with 4 guys to a car sitting in 2 front bucket seats and 2 second row bucket seats.  They then recorded a comfort rating from 1 to 10 where 1 was roughly equal to "I'm freezing my butt off" to 10- "Gee this is just like Palm Springs in the summertime".  Everybody was a 0 for the first reading, it was 30below zero outside.  Then the vans were all started  and idled in max warm defrost mode high blower and comfort readings were taken every 5 minutes and cleared areas of the windshields were outlined with the marking pens.  So the test ran for 30 minutes with the gasoline doing best with probably 75% clear windshield and comfort level  of 8 at the end of the test, 2.2L IDI second best and the loser of the day- the direct injected diesel which narvel-narvel-narvelled so loudly everyone had hearing damage at the end of 30 minutes and it achieved a comfort rating of somewhere between 3 and 4.  the windshield pattern was accurately described by the good manager from Trafford House as "2 pissholes in the snow".  As the junior member of the trip representing the HVAC lab I got the job of driving the 2.0L direct injected corn popper back to Dearborn and I wore a set of Mickey Mouse ears all the way.  Fortunately there was a warm spell as soon as we got south of the Mackinac Bridge so I didn't freeze to death but like Olds 83 said- it does get cold in MN in February.   

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"leaving faucets open will not help if they have a well." say what ? As long as under pressure and warmed by the building/ground, a slow drip will prevent freezing. Agree there are conditions where it won't help (sub-zero, unheated building, pipes above frost line) but source should not matter.

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In our 1853 house we have one location where the water lines run by a 2' thick stone wall at the sill plate. We leave both the hot and cold water dripping when the outside temperature is below 20 degrees. Other solutions have not worked well. This is from someone who actually does it. Raise your hand if you really do it. A lot can be imagined but the empirical data is best.

 

It was 2 degrees this morning. The sky is clear and the sun is out, already up to 10! I backed my truck up from the shadow of the garage so it will be nice and toasty inside when I go up to town at 3PM for coffee.

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I thought that was on the desktop version? I've used mobile for months and I know neither location nor signature show up there.

 

Anyhoo with that in mind- prepping for 2nd ice storm in 5 days here in southern Virginia, along the VA-NC border. 45 and sunny right now. Daybreak tomorrow will be 31 and getting walloped with freezing rain that's expected to leave 3/4" or more of ice on trees and power lines.

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On 2/16/2021 at 3:17 PM, Str8-8-Dave said:

frightful!  We were led to believe we might get 7-9" in Port Huron.  We actually live 5-6miles west of the St. Clair River/Lake Huron shoreline but I'm gonna guess we might have gotten a bit more than that.  I've been working on my 31 Buick coupe for a while now, it came to our house in April of 2018 and went on jack stands almost immediately thereafter.  I thought about letting the old gal down and taking her out for a test drive today but, umm, maybe I will wait a bit...

20210216_094338.jpg

 

20210216_094258.jpg

 

20210216_094251.jpg

 

20210216_142621.jpg

 

I'll guess the Steelhead fishing right now is tougher than normal?

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