Art

[barretcreek]

How you and your neighbors doing? Have you got water or are the lines frozen? Friend in DFW lives close to a regional medical center so they have power but nearby is dark.

Guess the question should be do you have electricity.

[Art]

In our house we have electricity and water. We had the taps open at a trickle and opened them wide for a half minute or so every couple of hours. We slept in shifts the last two nights making sure the pipes were clear. Our daughter and her family have electricity but had a pipe in a downstairs interior wall break, the damage is minimal but of course now they don't have water. Our son has had off and on power in San Antonio.

We live close to a high school that doubles as a shelter which I believe gives us a leg up when it comes to keeping power.

Thank you for asking.

[m1ashooter]

Not Art but live a few miles from him I think. 55% of our local power company is without power. Thats 1.2 million customers. It doesn't seem like much headway is being made. The outages are all over the Houston Metro. We are blessed as we still have power.

[S.A. Boggs]

I feel sorry for you guys in TX, my bride and I have experienced similar over our 40 year marriage. South of us got nailed hard with ice, our power flickered for a few seconds. How are you guy's staying warm?
Sam

[JB White]

I experienced a Houston snowstorm back in the mid 70's. The North Freeway was littered with wrecks and spinouts from downtown out to the beltway. Only two of us showed up for work that morning. Myself and a fellow from Detroit.
The city isn't prepared for it. Having a fleet of plows and salt trucks ready for just in case is a complete waste of funds.

Living back up north now. In the past couple of weeks we've had snow nearly everyday. Over a foot last night which is always a PIA. Average of 40 inches on the ground now. Utilities are braced for it as its the norm. Some people forget how to drive in it. Most everyone remembers how to walk in it. Shovelling is another story. By the time you get a system down pat, you're too danged old to go at it balls to the wall.

Who in Texas owns a snowblower? Or even a snow shovel for that matter? Sorel boots? Fleece lined leather work gloves which have been waterproofed? How to layer lightweight clothing for warmth and breathability? I worked some cold winters in Texas but they were no worse than a rough autumn morning up north.

Hang in there. Keep dry and stay warm. The sun will be out and it will all seem like a bad dream. Just remember that grain shovels double as snow shovels, and the piles you make are excellent beer coolers. Natures ice house!

[dryheat]

I actually was in Texas in the 70's. I remember getting snow in Kingsville. They had us go out and sweep snow off the planes. I really liked winter in Texas, just about perfect. Except when it rained for ten days. Phoenix missed this whole thing. It just grazed the NE corner. A little windy.

[m1ashooter]

This is a mess, mostly man made in my opinion. Instead of the out of power numbers going down they are higher then a few hours ago. 1.4 million customers have no power. Luckily many have stayed off of the roads. I will now be putting in a whole house generator as we are getting older and don't want to deal with this crap in the future.

[JB White]

This is a mess, mostly man made in my opinion. Instead of the out of power numbers going down they are higher then a few hours ago. 1.4 million customers have no power. Luckily many have stayed off of the roads. I will now be putting in a whole house generator as we are getting older and don't want to deal with this crap in the future.

Not a bad idea. Climate is changing and as I recall your area flood plain maps change faster than Chicago weather. Something else will happen hot or cold. Until there are some infrastructure changes and your power companies can agree on a grid system that allows for better rerouting and more efficient emergency services...
Our power outages usually last for hours at worst. Not for days unless its an isolated incident. Longest I ever had to do without was a couple of days. So localized due to a blown transformer that my neighbor was up and running but I wasn't.
150 feet of cord kept my refrigerator and freezer running, (good neighbor) but we lived with oil lamps for lighting.

That having been said, whole house generators are becoming a point of interest here too. Our grid seems to be aging faster all the time and upgrades can't be done in a year or two.

[Merc]

The unusual weather will be over by the weekend and it will be time for those affected by the power failures to consider a back-up generator. They should be installed by professionals, can be permanently and safely wired into your electrical system, should be fueled by propane or natural gas and can start automatically when a power failure occurs. Size is important. A 20 KW rated generator can continuously power a whole house.

[JB White]

The weather reached out and touched me today. ATM's are down around here. Went to three different locations only to see the same sign. Since I was in a bank lobby I asked one of the tellers. (slow time of the day so I was the only one there.)
ATM's are down around Chicago from a bank based in Detroit because of power being down across Texas.

I remember a time when that would have been impossible to believe.

Heard from friends in Harris County TX today as well as someone in Houston proper. I feel the anguish and frustration. Also the blame game has started, or so I'm told. SOMEBODY has to be at fault.
Never mind each section of cable between poles suddenly became a quarter ton heavier with ice.

[sid]

Merc has the right idea. We had a Generac generator in our house and it ran on natural gas. It was serviced once a year by a Generac certified electrician. Whenever we had an outage it would go on automatically and then shut itself off after power was restored. Even in the summer when we had many lights on and our central air-conditioning going full blast.

[Art]

Ok guys, time for an after action report.

This was not as bad as the catastrophic freeze of 1983 when it didn't get above freezing for four straight days in Houston and was below freezing at night for 11.

we lost power for 22 hours yesterday, no big gig especially since we have a generator and know enough to drip our lines to keep our pipes from fracturing. There has been a loss in water pressure so there is a boil order in effect. It doesn't affect us much because we have a water reserve. Years ago before a hurricane our son-in-law gave us a 5 gallon contractor Igloo cooler, you know, the ones you see on trucks for work crews. We filled it before this mess and are using it for coffee and stuff.

Because we were prepared we had no physical damage to our property, lost no food from the reefer or freezer and basically suffered mild inconvenience. Our daughter had a fractured pipe but the damage isn't too great. Our son lives in an apt. in San Antonio and lost all of his food.

It was in reality not as bad as a hurricane overall but people here don't deal with cold well, individually or collectively and there have been deaths in the area, mostly in Galveston County. The biggest damage is broken water pipes in houses and small businesses.

Thank you all for your concern.

[S.A. Boggs]

Ok guys, time for an after action report.

This was not as bad as the catastrophic freeze of 1983 when it didn't get above freezing for four straight days in Houston and was below freezing at night for 11.

we lost power for 22 hours yesterday, no big gig especially since we have a generator and know enough to drip our lines to keep our pipes from fracturing. There has been a loss in water pressure so there is a boil order in effect. It doesn't affect us much because we have a water reserve. Years ago before a hurricane our son-in-law gave us a 5 gallon contractor Igloo cooler, you know, the ones you see on trucks for work crews. We filled it before this mess and are using it for coffee and stuff.

Because we were prepared we had no physical damage to our property, lost no food from the reefer or freezer and basically suffered mild inconvenience. Our daughter had a fractured pipe but the damage isn't too great. Our son lives in an apt. in San Antonio and lost all of his food.

It was in reality not as bad as a hurricane overall but people here don't deal with cold well, individually or collectively and there have been deaths in the area, mostly in Galveston County. The biggest damage is broken water pipes in houses and small businesses.

Thank you all for your concern.

Glad to hear you and yours are O.K.
Sam

[Vern Humphrey]

I'm home alone right now -- and can't get up the mountain even with 4-wheel drive. I've got plenty to eat, and the electricity and water are still on. If they go off, I've got a 48 KW propane generator, and both bathtubs filled with water.

[Merc]

We drove across Rt 40 in TX on our way from Pittsburgh to Phoenix, AZ in the spring of 2017 and we must have seen several hundred wind turbine generators on both sides of the highway. It seemed like an ideal place for these generators because the wind was very powerful and never seemed to quit. We saw several tractor-trailers that were laying on their sides on the highway from being blown over by powerful gusts of wind. The recent ice storms in TX have demonstrated how unreliable wind turbines can be under certain circumstances. They only produce power if they are being driven by the wind and will draw power and run like motors if there is no wind unless they are automatically disconnected. It’s foolish to see politicians believe that wind turbines are the going to be our future primary source of reliable power.

[Vern Humphrey]

In addition to which, wind turbines kill thousands of birds, including Bald Eagles.

[oscars]

US Fish and Wildlife estimates that wind blades kill 140-500, 000 birds per year. However, free ranging domestic cats kill 4-6 billion birds and 18 billion small animals per year.

[Art]

US Fish and Wildlife estimates that wind blades kill 140-500, 000 birds per year. However, free ranging domestic cats kill 4-6 billion birds and 18 billion small animals per year.

The number of birds killed by feral cats is a SWAG proven by the extreme range in the numbers. I don't dispute the number is extremely high but anyone who estimates how high is doing just that....estimating. On the other hand, you can walk under wind turbines and count the casualties.

That 140,000 to 500,000 birds per annum is on top of what domestic cats kill, not in place of. Wind Turbines are especially hard on raptors which led the government to give them a special dispensation when it came to killing hawks, vultures, owls and especially eagles. The number of dead birds will go up as wind turbine numbers increase. Personally I think off shore is the best place for them but this is an area in which I don't have a vote.

The majority of the small mammals killed by cats are pest rodents, rats and mice. They do nail the occasional rabbit or squirrel. The reason we originally domesticated them is their pest control function.

[Art]

Ok, its officially over for us with the expiration of the boil water order at about 5:00 p.m. today so after 8 days minus a few hours:

We expended about 2 gallons of reserve fuel, all of the water in the 5 gallon contractor cooler we fill for these emergencies plus about half a flat of bottled water and a few cans of reserve food. Other than that we used the stuff in our fridge and freezer. We will probably have to replace some shrubs which is no big deal. All in all from that point of view less for us than the hardship of a medium hurricane.

Every time we find something else we can use. We don't think much about winter storm emergencies. Because of this one we'll buy an electric space heater that we may never use but better safe than sorry.

We were pretty fortunate on he electric end, some people were without power for three plus days during the worst of it.

[Griff Murphey]

We had one burst pipe under the house in a copper water line. We had no water from Wednesday night to Friday morning. My week was a solid washout at my office.
Incidentally all these pundits saying how great El Paso did because it was on the national grid are ignoring the fact that El Paso had highs in the 40’s and 50’s while the rest of the state was freezing.

[Art]

We had one burst pipe under the house in a copper water line. We had no water from Wednesday night to Friday morning. My week was a solid washout at my office.
Incidentally all these pundits saying how great El Paso did because it was on the national grid are ignoring the fact that El Paso had highs in the 40’s and 50’s while the rest of the state was freezing.

A strip of Southeast Texas is on the national grid too and towns and cities there like Beaumont and Silsbee were in the same rough shape as Houston and San Antonio, including extensive power outages and boil water notices.