How's your weather?

[karstopography]

Yep. My garage is running about 17 degrees over the outside temperature, currently outside 19:30 hours it is 33 F. Most every place in Texas is now below freezing except the immediate coast around Galveston and down in the RGV. I put my big lemongrass, that was a total wrestling match since I couldn’t free the plant from the massively heavy ceramic container, in garage along with some porch plants and 8 10” 3’ tall landscape sansaveria hoping I can keep it all above freezing in the garage.

I piled heaps of spanish moss around my artichokes in hopes that might be the difference. Picked all lettuce, spinach, bok choi, escarole, some of the carrots, left the kale untouched.

The big black beauty eggplant from last spring will soon be dead. So too for the 23 tomato plants out there, too. No problem. Rolled the dice on those and made a bad bet. Dad and I picked bushels and bushels of blood oranges and grapefruit. Probably will lose the all decade or two plus old citrus trees, but maybe we’ll not get quite as cold as predicted. They’ve been through the low 20s unscathed.

Just hope the pipes make it. Don’t want the well to freeze either. Piled Spanish moss two feet thick around the already wrapped and insulated above ground pipes. Wrapped lots of stuff, pipes, water mains, faucets, aerobic septic system. Helped my folks with some of theirs. Did some work related freeze production stuff. Hurricanes might actually be easier and less time consuming to prepare for.

[Cole_Robbie]

I left the cold water dripping, so then the next day only the hot water was frozen...because I think ahead like that.

[worth1]

I insulated my garage walls and ceiling years ago.
It is 20 degrees outside and 45 in the garage.
Have door from house to garage open and pumping more warm air into the garage with fan.
Think I might do a load of laundry too.

[Rajun Gardener]

It dropped to 29 here and lower temps to come, I'm glad I went the extra step to insulate above the code building the house. We'll see in the next 2 days how bad it gets and if the power lines get knocked down by broken branches.

[SpookyShoe]

No power now. Rolling blackouts. Half of the state's wind turbines that generate power are frozen. Snow rarer than hen's teeth and icy roads. Colder tonight. This is the first time I've ever seen the little pond freeze.

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[worth1]

This is as far out of the house I'm going with no shoes on and just a tee shirt.
No power outage here yet but Austin is crippled.
I think it's 7F outside.

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[karstopography]

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16 degrees, -9 C here this morning. The heavy freezing rain never materialized. Sleet and a dusting of snow, that’s all we got. Sun is popping out. Power has so far stayed on. Understand rolling blackouts are happening. Currently, 30 percent of the county has no electricity.

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Garage has stayed above freezing. 43 degrees out there this morning. Plants that got in the garage are going to make it.

[worth1]

Same shot as yesterday but today.
Got dressed and went outside once and not enough coats on.
Can't find one of my snow boots.
Looks like one vehicle went down the street.
Must have been a 4×4.
I knocked on every door and can't seem to find anyone that wants to come out and play.

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[Growing Coastal]

I read in the news that Texas is going to get some federal relief to help because of the weather!
Looks like you got more snow than we did. Ours is melting already. Warmer temps on the way.

[worth1]

Latest glamor shot.

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[worth1]

My idiot neighbor has no idea how to deal with this.
I went out turned the truck on and came back in the house.
He isn't patient and is scraping ice off his truck because he can't wait for it to warm up on it's own.
I used to get up every morning at 20 belowF and start every truck an hour or more before we took off
Anything colder and we let them run 24 hours a day which was quite often.
Nothing froze last night.

[worth1]

Much of the reason for the rolling blackouts is because they can't supply enough energy to meet the demands.
You go over capacity in a generation plant and they shut down.
It isn't any easy task to get them going again.
I have literally stood at the controls several times watching a friend do it with a turbine generator.
You have to synchronize the generators you just don't flip a switch because they are 3 phase.
Whether you want to hear it or not jumping from one power source to another before the bugs are completely worked out is going to get you this sort of thing..
Austin has a gas powered plant they shut down and they sure could use it now.
This isn't a political comment on energy it is one on the laws of physics.
I think we are going to have more of these events coming in the future.
Hot summers and colder winters.
Steam power didn't just happen over night.
Nor did petroleum power.
At first it was very inefficient.
A solar panel isn't going to do much good covered in snow.
On the bright side I think the fruit trees got the required amount of chill hours.
But the Texas olive oil industry took a huge hit.
I bet all those trees are dead after this.

[wildcat62]

You are talking my game now Worth. Retired now, but put in 36+ years at a large power generation station. Most people have no idea how big & complicated these plants are. My former employer has coal, natural gas & solar in our portfolio and they all have their place. Not to get on a political rant but those wanting to go all in on a green new deal at this point in time may need to set in the cold/dark for a few days before they realize they need to put the brakes on that idea. Don't get me wrong I'm all for clean energy. But the industry is already trending that way on it's own. Prayers for all those effected by somebody else's mistake.

[worth1]

Practically 200,000 people without power in Austin Texas.
Told it will be tomorrow before they get it back.
Keep in mind many don't have land lines and no way to charge the cell phones.
Gas stations out of power and no way to keep warm in car or charge phones if the cars run out of fuel.
Many are young and don't have a pile of blankets to stay warm.
Many are poor and can't afford warm blankets or clothes.
The last time it was this cold for me was in 89 and we couldn't afford the heat.
Every cat in the house was under the blankets with us.
It was 30 something degrees in the house and dropping.

[karstopography]

Brazoria County
Customers Tracked142,254
Customers Out187,361
Outage %
131.71%
Not sure how these numbers come to be. Can there exist a 131% outage?

Clearly, since I still have power, the numbers aren’t accurate. But, we know a lot of people without power, frozen pipes.

[Rajun Gardener]

The sun is out and the temps went from 26 to 31, ice is melting off the roof and driveway. I hope they're wrong on the lows but we'll se in the morning.

The timing of this storm couldn't be better, Mardi Gras is tomorrow and most companies are closed. Theyusually swap out MLK day for Mardi Gras with pay and almost everyone takes a 4 day weekend.

[ness]

I'm in the Kansas City area and we're having rolling blackouts. I don't recall that ever happening before. -5 degrees here Monday afternoon.

[Cole_Robbie]

I just now tried to leave my girlfriend's house, but couldn't get up the hill in my 2wd truck. I came back, loaded more fire wood in the back for weight, and tried again, not making it much further. I have all terrain tires and usually don't have a problem with snow. There hasn't been a plow on the road and the drifts are approaching a foot deep.

So much for going home today. She has a fireplace so at least we are warm.

[worth1]

See this hill in the picture.
I couldn't make it up and ended up sideways because of worthless posi track.
Thankfully some of my Hispanic neighbors stopped and pulled me up the hill with their giant 4x4 diesel truck.
We all stick together in Texas and help each other out.
I had a 30 foot cable I always keep in the truck.
All of Bastrop looks like this on every road.

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[bower]

With regards your power outages, we had a major outage event with rolling blackouts that lasted ten days a few years ago (known as "Dark NL"). It happened to be record cold temperatures and the big demand is what caused the system to crash. Three jennys and one was down for maintenance and in need of a part. They had a really hard time to get power going on a rolling basis. Everyone was asked to cut back on their usage severely, as the problem was explained. Now it is more of a routine to turn everything off and use as little as possible any time it goes down and you are getting a little interval of power on while waiting for the whole grid to be restored.
I hope none of you loses anything precious in the garden. Worth, I can't believe the amount of snow you got and staying on the ground!
Frozen pipes, oh my it sounds like plenty of that. At least I hope your weather goes back to normal so you won't be personally freezing while waiting for all to be fixed.
I just watched your weather system on the weatherman's map, sweeping into the SE and Eastern US and headed our way - will be here tomorrow night so it's moving pretty fast. We'll get the 'all weathers' mix, snow followed by freezing rain and then rain on Wednesday. Will be a mess but nothing we're not used to here.