How Is Everyone Doing After The Storm?

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The Fine Art Of Rocking

I hadn't even thought about that in years and years, but I remember it well.

Down here the biggest highway culprit is your upscale soccer mom in her Ford Expedition or Chevy Yukon going 80mph down the freeway in a rainstorm. Iphone in one hand and an avocado hamburger in the other. These sometimes have a notebook open on the console so they can tweet and Facebook their current activities. God help you if you get in her way. She's important and has a life of her own and wants the world to know it!

Then you get your high schoolers in Daddy's huge pickup driving the same way. Usually when they drive these huge trucks (almost always jacked up sky high) they are completely covered in mud. It just looks cool that way.

For the last few months we have been going out to run errands in the evenings. Like after 9pm. At that time most of the people I have mentioned above are off the roads and are at home. But the weekends are another story.
 
Well here in mid MI we got dumped on 13.5" of snow in the last 15 hours of so with a possible 1-2" more overnight.  My normal 8 minute drive home was a log 25 minutes.  No real issues, just very slow driving and a few nuts zipping by most of the traffic at high speeds for the conditions.  Got home, turned into the drive way and got stuck.  Left the car at the end of the driveway.  will get the snow blower out tomorrow.
 
There's a difference ...

"Why don't they just teach that every car, SUV, truck, whatever has 4 wheel stop. Yes, 4 wheel stop, brakes on each wheel."

There's a difference between 4-wheel brakes and 4-wheel STOP.

Just because you hit the brakes -- especially on ice -- doesn't mean you're going to actually STOP.
 
Just because you hit the brakes -- especially on ice -- doesn't mean you're going to actually STOP.

Too many people find out this fact for themselves only after the slipping process starts. Typical comment "But I PAID GOOD MONEY for the ability to drive anywhere at any speed I want whenever I want."
 
Louie ...

... I was in that thick fog on the West Side Highway earlier.

And with slushy ice on the roads, my driver was STILL speeding at 70. I had to ask him twice to slow down, and he had the nerve to argue with me about it.

OMFG. Seriously.
 
After near 10 years in Northern Vermont

30 miles from the Canadian border, other than obviously driving with common sense for the condtions, we found the greatest boon for winter driving to be a proper real (not these namby-pamby crossovers, car based SUVS, pickups etc) off-road truck based SUV (Trooper, Xterra, Rover, big Montero, etc) with 4WD Hi and Lo, locking differentials, and most importantly wearing Nokian Hakkapelliita snow tires with studs. Made in Finland with specially adapted rubber compounds by people who really know driving in snow, they help mightily even in black ice and very slippery conditions, reducing stopping distances as much as 50% compared to non-studded tires, helping stopping also in snow, though not as much as on ice. With a 1000' driveway up hill and a 180 degree turn, even when unplowed in a 30" snow we never got stuck. Being in Medicine, for my wife not getting to work was not an option.
The only thing better than studded Hakkas are snow chains, but they are a real pain to use, and can't be driven on non-snow-covered roads, so have to be removed immediately, but are the ultimate if you HAVE to get through.
 
Record Cold in Chicago

We're having record cold in Chicago. My outdoor thermometer sensor, mounted on the wall of my building, said -9 this morning (the coldest it's ever read), the local bank said -22 when I went to the train and it's now a balmy -15 in the loop with ice on the inside of our office windows and even the mullions!

Here's a shot of the north wind blowing snow off the parapet of the building behind me.

davey7++1-6-2014-14-47-1.jpg
 
We were in a big ice storm a week ago with major power outages everywhere and we were in low 50's here today with tons of RAIN turning it into a skating rink, come on, is this the new winter in Maine? The cold is expected to come back with a vengance and freeze everything solid tonight. I think it is starting already, furnace is running.
 
Speaking of stupid.....

.....Faux News is using the record cold to discredit (the socialist conspiracy of) global warming. "How can it be warming when it's colder than ever?"

Less alarming that Faux would do that, than the number of viewers likely to believe them.

Polar vortex is perfectly normal. What's NOT normal is the offset driving it south as far as the Gulf. It's yielding to normal mid-latitude jets and we'll be 65F again by Saturday. After breaking records..... and pipes. It only got down to 12F last night, but our infrastructure is not rated much below 20F.
 
Many flights from the west coast bound for the so-called "polar vortex" were either canceled or delayed today.  In the Bay Area, 57 were canceled out of SFO, 13 out of SJC and 3 out of OAK with delays ranging anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours.

 

The (much appreciated) overnight curfew at SJC is lifted at 6:30 AM, and between that time and 7 AM, flights generally depart at the rate of almost one per minute.  This morning I heard only four take-offs between 6:30 and 6:45.

 

Other than that, we're just sitting here with sunny skies, mid-60s and still waiting for rain.  2013 went down as the driest year in history -- by far -- for most areas of California.
 
This kind of weather has its upside

If you have a warm, comfy place, you cook some comfort food, get out your favourite movies and knuckle down in front of your fireplace. The weather never does what people want and no amount of whingeing and hysteria will change that; and what's normal anyway? New Orleans got down to 6 degrees F in 1899, on that same day Fort Worth got down to -8 degrees F and I bet that there was no long-term damage to civilization as a result. 12 degrees sounds almost tropical.
 
Well the wind finally stopped blowing and the current temp is 24F which is the coldest we've seen in a number of years. All the home improvement/hardware stores have been doing brisk business selling out of their stock of pipe insulating foam.

Pipes down here start to freeze at 26F. People have all year long to insulate their pipes, but then they always wait until the last minute. The year we moved into this house one of the first things we did was insulate the pipes in the attic, walls, etc. Pipes in the walls were pretty easy. Buy that prefitted foam pipe insulation and then just slide it down the pipe into the outside walls.

We have a couple of long runs of pipe in the attic. What I did was when I was up in a northern city I bought a few rolls of that thermostatic heat tape that you can buy for gutters to keep them from icing up. When the temp in the attic hits 30F the heat tape turns on to keep the pipes from freezing.

The television news shows were telling people that if they can't find pipe insulation, disposable baby diapers are a good substitute. Can you imagine that?
 
a slight wink, but....

... you'd have to evaluate the "civilization" of New Orleans and Fort Worth before and after the 1899 ice age to give that comment any weight.

West Fort Worth (where I live) and for all I know ALL of New Orleans is a ghetto. Would either/both be more or less so given that winter or an alternative? I mean like, neither were particularly 'civilized' to start with, by modest standards.
 
 
<blockquote>Ultramatic said:  Well, when I got to the supermarket, the thermometer in the truck read 26F. An our later when I got back it read 15F.</blockquote> Outdoor temp on the thermostat read 25°F when I left for work at 3 AM.  The (detached) garage temp was apparently 42°F per the car thermometer, if that's reasonable to assume.  Upon reaching the office maybe 6 mins later, the car temp was 21°F.
 
"neither were particularly 'civilized' ..."

That is an interesting point Rick and one that could do with some serious government funding to get to the bottom of. Personally, I haven't the brains nor the inclination and, upon reading your response, my energy levels inexplicably dropped to comatose levels; but I'm now 50, soon to be 51, and my doctor says that's normal.

As for The Big Easy, I wouldn't mind slumming it in the Garden District.
 

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