Severe weather thread

[Yvonne Smith]

We have a severe winter storm warning for here in Alabama, and probably other parts of the South for this weekend. By Friday night we should start having some mixture of snow, freezing rain, and possible an ice storm, which would be the very worst thing to happen. If we get snow, they are saying we could have over a foot here in Huntsville, which is way more than I have ever seen here, and everything will grind to a stop except for emergency vehicles. The south has no snowplows or any way to deal with snow, so even an inch makes roads impassable here.

Even worse, would be if we have an ice storm, with several inches of ice on the trees, which will break branches, block roads, and most likely, put al of us without power, maybe for days, or even a week or more in some areas that are hit hard.
By Tuesday, they are saying the temperature here could drop to zero or even below, so with no electricity for heat, people will be freezing, and water pipes will freeze and break of people do not have the water running enough.

We have the gas wall heater, so we can keep a little heat in the front room, and put up heavy curtains to block off the rest of the house if necessary, and we can sleep in our little recliner chairs if we have to do that. Bobby thinks we can run the electric blanket with an inverter, so if we can warm up the bed, then we should be okay sleeping there. All of the phones and iPads will be charged up, but if the power outage lasts very long, we might not be online much, to conserve our batteries. I will let you know if that happens, and should be able to still send brief messages, just not my usual rambling posts here.
Hopefully, it won’t end up as bad as they are predicting. If we just get snow, we should not lose power for very long, if at all.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Here is the latest update on the ice storm, and it looks like it will hit people all the way from Texas to the East Coast. Are you seeing this kind of weather forecast, @John Brunner ?

 

[Mary Robi]

As someone said on another forum, Jim Cantore is showing up on the weather channel. You KNOW you're in trouble.....

 

[John Brunner]

Here is the latest update on the ice storm, and it looks like it will hit people all the way from Texas to the East Coast. Are you seeing this kind of weather forecast, @John Brunner ?

Current forecast is 14.5" Saturday, 10" Sunday. The .gov website (NOAA) is saying "snow" but has yet to put a number to it. The problem for me and heating with wood is a series of 5°F nights coming up.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Current forecast is 14.5" Saturday, 10" Sunday. The .gov website (NOAA) is saying "snow" but has yet to put a number to it. The problem for me and heating with wood is a series of 5°F nights coming up.

Do you have any kind of supplementary heat besides wood ? Back when the kids were growing up and we lived in a little shack in north Idaho, we just has a barrel stove for heat. That barrel got really hot , but it was not much good for keeping a fire overnight like a real wood stove would do.
We had several lumber mills near Bonners Ferry, and the kids and i would take the truck to the mill and load up the back with mill ends from the pile that the mill threw out every day, and that is how we had wood to keep the fire going overnight.

In the winter, it was often below zero at night, so we were always freezing when we got up in the morning, before we got the fire going to warm the place up.
And making the run to the outhouse was always done as fast as possible ! I am so glad that is not part of my life any longer, and I don’t miss having a wood stove, even if it can be a lifesaver when the power is out.

 

[Don Alaska]

It all depends on the quality of the woodstove you have. I have used barrel stoves in cabins, and I have a cast iron stove in my workshop, but the house has a good welded steel "airtight" stove that will keep the house pretty toasty although the back bedrooms on the first floor get cool when the temperature drops. We only heated primarily with wood for about three years here and used 9-10 full cords of wood each winter. Now we use it only for emergencies, The last time was a furnace blower motor failure and we used the stove for almost three weeks before the furnace was replaced.

 

[John Brunner]

Do you have any kind of supplementary heat besides wood ? Back when the kids were growing up and we lived in a little shack in north Idaho, we just has a barrel stove for heat. That barrel got really hot , but it was not much good for keeping a fire overnight like a real wood stove would do.
We had several lumber mills near Bonners Ferry, and the kids and i would take the truck to the mill and load up the back with mill ends from the pile that the mill threw out every day, and that is how we had wood to keep the fire going overnight.

In the winter, it was often below zero at night, so we were always freezing when we got up in the morning, before we got the fire going to warm the place up.
And making the run to the outhouse was always done as fast as possible ! I am so glad that is not part of my life any longer, and I don’t miss having a wood stove, even if it can be a lifesaver when the power is out.

View attachment 592

Before I bought this place, the investor who owned it put in a central HVAC unit. (There was only a wood stove and window A/C units.) But those things don't do well in really cold temps. And this place has no insulation. I suspect the roof leaked and it all washed out of the walls. (The place was originally listed for the land only, then the guy decided to fix up the house and put it back on the market.) I fixed the massive air leak that the attic stairs caused and it helped immensely. Before I insulated that spot, I was getting up every night and refilling the wood stove, and I've been good ever since. (I've had to mess with the fire a number of times this year, but that's because of poor wood quality, and is really what's driving my current issue. I've had 5 years or so of never having to mess with it.)

Had I realized there was no insulation in the walls, I might have had something done about it before I moved my stuff in, painted, etc. But that process is always messy (3 vertical large holes in the exterior walls in between every16" centered studs) and often leaves air gaps.

 

[John Brunner]

It all depends on the quality of the woodstove you have. I have used barrel stoves in cabins, and I have a cast iron stove in my workshop, but the house has a good welded steel "airtight" stove that will keep the house pretty toasty although the back bedrooms on the first floor get cool when the temperature drops. We only heated primarily with wood for about three years here and used 9-10 full cords of wood each winter. Now we use it only for emergencies, The last time was a furnace blower motor failure and we used the stove for almost three weeks before the furnace was replaced.

I spend maybe $600/year to keep my place toasty, and that's buying the firewood...under 2 cords. I keep reminding myself of that when I'm stacking wood and replenishing the racks on my front porch. One neighbor has a place roughly 1/2 the size of mine (an old uninsulated hip-roof house) and he told me he spends $1,000/month on propane for his furnace during a typical central Virginia winter. That's on the extreme end of the scale, but lots folks around here in more modern homes spend $400-$500 hundred dollars/month during the winter for heat pump "heat." That's legacy information...they probably spend more now that data centers have invaded.

 

[Mary Stetler]

I spend maybe $600/year to keep my place toasty, and that's buying the firewood...under 2 cords. I keep reminding myself of that when I'm stacking wood and replenishing the racks on my front porch. One neighbor has a place roughly 1/2 the size of mine (an old uninsulated hip-roof house) and he told me he spends $1,000/month on propane for his furnace during a typical central Virginia winter. That's on the extreme end of the scale, but lots folks around here in more modern homes spend $400-$500 hundred dollars/month during the winter for heat pump "heat." That's legacy information...they probably spend more now that data centers have invaded.

I put in the angry face because I resent we are paying for data centers with our energy bills.
In the barn house I have a small wood stove and when I stayed in the house I would stoke it over the night so it would stay warm for the kids. We had an electric oil radiator for the bedroom if it got really cold although I am not sure how we would do in the upcoming -17F they are forecasting.

 

[Mary Stetler]

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I've been getting a little bit of a chuckle from some 'Tubers, down souf', pleading with their viewers:

"Don't make fun of us. Yes, we slide off into the ditch at 3 MPH in the snow. But, but, but we get special snow unlike the pretty stuff y'all enjoy in Winter. Arrs is like falling kitty litter, not purty flakes driftin' down."

Meanwhile we're looking at -3 F for highs with high winds during the impending storm.

 

[Don Alaska]

I spend maybe $600/year to keep my place toasty, and that's buying the firewood...under 2 cords. I keep reminding myself of that when I'm stacking wood and replenishing the racks on my front porch. One neighbor has a place roughly 1/2 the size of mine (an old uninsulated hip-roof house) and he told me he spends $1,000/month on propane for his furnace during a typical central Virginia winter. That's on the extreme end of the scale, but lots folks around here in more modern homes spend $400-$500 hundred dollars/month during the winter for heat pump "heat." That's legacy information...they probably spend more now that data centers have invaded.

A Toyostove or Monitor would be another option if you need one, but just insulating the walls of the room with the wood stove might be the easiest since you seldom have really cold nights.

 

[Don Alaska]

Some of that is undoubtedly drifted snow against a house. We don't get a lot of wind here since we are pretty wooded, but I have sons who are greatly affected by the wind and either the snow (and a lot of their stuff) blows away, or it gets piled against whatever is in the way.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Heavy icing is no joke for anyone. Some parts of the country are even less able to deal with it on trees and power lines. A lot of trees there just haven't had their weak spots tested by heavy ice or snow loads in their past.

So I suspect power outages might be the big threat. And if you can't drive on ice and in snow, just stay home. Maybe get some "extras" to fill in here and there but the aftermath won't last long. You don't need a truckload of bottled water and toilet paper.

 

[Yvonne Smith]

Heavy icing is no joke for anyone. Some parts of the country are even less able to deal with it on trees and power lines. A lot of trees there just haven't had their weak spots tested by heavy ice or snow loads in their past.

So I suspect power outages might be the big threat. And if you can't drive on ice and in snow, just stay home. Maybe get some "extras" to fill in here and there but the aftermath won't last long. You don't need a truckload of bottled water and toilet paper.

This is exactly right, @Jacob Petersheim , it is the extended power outages , coupled with the extremes cold temperatures that will be the problem for the main part.
With snow, people here can just stay home, and wait until it warms back up and either rains off or melts. But with the ice storm, even after all the snow and ice is gone, the downed trees and maybe even power lines are everywhere, and it take a while to get the roads cleared and then fix the power lines.

This storm seems like it is going to be widespread, and cover a lot of the eastern US, so people all over will be dealing with what ever happens in each part of the affected areas. They won’t be able to send extra linemen in from other areas, because they will be needed at home.
I buy my TP from Sam’s Club, so we have plenty of that, but will probably store some water just in case we need it. We will leave water running enough to keep it from freezing in the pipes, so we should have water.

 

[Marie Miller]

Heavy icing is no joke for anyone. Some parts of the country are even less able to deal with it on trees and power lines. A lot of trees there just haven't had their weak spots tested by heavy ice or snow loads in their past.

So I suspect power outages might be the big threat. And if you can't drive on ice and in snow, just stay home. Maybe get some "extras" to fill in here and there but the aftermath won't last long. You don't need a truckload of bottled water and toilet paper.

We have the icing over at least once a winter. Power outages for prolonged periods of time come with it. Yes, we need bottled water! I can tell SO that dinner will be slim pickings but our furry will not understand that. The rule of plenty plus more applies. There are others we may have to support.

 

[John Brunner]

Our snow forecast has been cut back somewhat, from 24" total to 10.5" of snow on Saturday night and 3" of "wintry mix" on Sunday (that term sounds like a Brach's candy assortment.) It's the wintry mix that concerns me the most. This is one pile of what we get along the right-of-way when there's ice storms:

You can't tell, but the driveway is icy, so I don't get too aggressive with the tractor.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

We're on exploding tree watch currently.

Some types of trees don't draw enough sap down for Winter at really cold temperatures. These can survive for decades and then one seaosn "crack, bang, boom" sporadic "gunshots" will crack through the night and limbs will fall or trees even split almost to ground level.

 

[Krystal Shay]

We are in for a winter storm too. The snow plow crews are already out putting some liquid salt down on the roads. Snow and ice covered roads with schools expected to out for the entire week next week. Weather guessers are pedicting 10-12 inches of snow. Temperatures are going to be anywhere in the teens and single digits to below zero with blowing winds. It happens sooner or later every year during Winter. Only 8 weeks until Spring!

 

[John Brunner]

At least our forecast continues to get walked back little by little.

Weather Underground now says 9" snow Saturday and 4.5" wintry mix on Sunday.
NOAA says less than 2" precip Saturday and no estimate for Sunday's wintry mix..
But WeatherUnderground tends to be localized, while NOAA is for the entire county.

That's better than the 24" we started at. Still several nights with temps below 10°F/near 0°F. And it's the ice that brings the trees down.

I just loaded up a ton of firewood on the front porch, and will get the tractor ready tomorrow, just in case I need it.