How's your weather?

[wildcat62]

My wife just texted her cousin in Arlington to check on them. She said their electricity had been off since Sunday, water went out yesterday & they are now staying in the place where she works with no water there either.

[AlittleSalt]

I feel sorry for those millions of people who lost water and electricity. Some may have lost their life. It's tough here too, but stuff happens.

[Shule]

We got about 2+ feet of snow recently, even though it hasn't been that cold this winter. I think it's over half-way melted, by now. It was getting to the point where I saw someone shoveling their roof. Our wood pile was inaccessible, too. We had even more snow a few years ago, but this was still a remarkable amount (and apparently Amazon anticipated it, since they told me my packages for my plant pots would be late because of the weather, which at the time I found a little surprising, considering it had been pretty tame for a long time). We might get some more snow, this week.

[worth1]

Woke up at 4 and discovered I didn't have any water.
It came back on but pressure is really low but getting better.
I know for a fact these poor folks that work for the city have been working really hard to keep things going
Probably all night..
Not only do they have to worry about us they have homes too.

[bower]

I always lose water when we lose power because I'm on a well. Honestly the short outages we have often enough to remind me what a PIA it is to have no running water. Just about everything seems to require water, and the number of times you go to the tap for something is... a lot! Because of that, my house is full of containers of water. I have drinking water backed up in juice bottles. Big gallon jugs of water in the basement in case of a long outage. In the kitchen I even have a set of old 2 liter wine bottles which contain water with a little dish soap. That stuff is super useful to deal with any dishes or even hand washing if water is out for any length of time. I don't have to worry about the bottles freezing because I have a wood furnace as heat backup, but the juice bottles I use are one tough container that doesn't burst when it freezes, so they are the perfect backup for anything major.
Hope you guys can stay warm enough until the polar air retreats!

[worth1]

Now the water is back off its 28 degrees and a 40% chance of snow.

[karstopography]

Just above freezing here, thank you Gulf of Mexico. Nothing lower than 27 degrees from here on out, 27 tomorrow morning and 28 the following.

We have a number of electricity, water, sanitary services, and food deprived refugees heading our way starting tonight with nurse daughter and her dog. Son the policeman and fiancée the nurse will be here Friday. Son the student is here all week. We got shed of Daughter the vet.Tech as she’s at her BFs parents in Tyler playing in the snow and taking care of her pet Axis fawn. It will be the miracle of the loaves and fishes to feed them all, especially if the food markets remain closed. I told my wife I’ll catch a mess of catfish or crappie out in the lake and we will have a fish fry. We’ll make it work.

[worth1]

The only tracks I have seen in the snow are raccoon tracks.
The deer don't know what to think.

[worth1]

https://www.newsradioklbj.com/austinloc ... harrassed/

[slugworth]

still snowing here

[Nan6b]

Y'all are in my prayers.

[pepperhead212]

Fluctuating above and below freezing here - snowed a little over 2" of wet snow, changing over to sleet the rest of the time. Disgusting out there, but I consider myself lucky, compared to the weather in many areas! Good luck to all of you out there in these trying times.

[Cole_Robbie]

My grandpa's renters have water again, now that I finished replacing their broken plumbing. They apparently had one bedroom blocked off with no heat, not realizing that was where the water pipes entered the house. Whoops.

The explosive power of ice inside pvc pipe is impressive.

20210218_154131.jpg

[peebee]

The weather in parts of Texas is just unbelievable, and more unbelievable are the added hardships of no heat, no water, low food & gasoline supplies too. How are those people expected to survive? News showed a man who froze to death sitting in his armchair in his home. Very very distressing to watch.
My prayers are with you all.

[worth1]

I got laughed at some time ago for canning water in my pressure canner.
It's paying off now.
Just had a cup of super strong hot tea.
My cat has water too.
Our zone is expected to have water by this evening.
I can't really blame any of this on anyone in particular.
I have to blame myself first.
Like the old saying don't throw stones in a glass house.
I could have been just fine and not trapped here if I would have had the foresight to have purchased snow chains for my truck
I was raised with snow chains in the winter.
Snow and ice never kept us from going anywhere.

[worth1]

Food situation not a problem here for me as many of you can imagine.
Had some of my frozen in a quart jar pork stew last night for supper.

20210218_171038.jpg

[slugworth]

https://www.newser.com/story/302727/it- ... gn=rss_top

[karstopography]

Reading about the power generation issues from someone who’s wife works for ERCOT, The Energy Reliability Council of Texas that oversees the grid that covers 90% of Texas.

Here’s his quote lifted from Texaskayakfisherman.com, another forum I’m on.

“My wife is a compliance analyst in the electric distribution industry and deals with Ercot regulations on a daily basis. Ercot demands all electric distribution entities in Texas to be prepared to the extreme extent at all times. For years I've heard her talk about how strict and demanding their regs are. Yet all these strict guidelines in place wasn't enough due to up to 40% of the energy capacity not available for one reason or another at a time when demand far exceeded the original projected energy cap. A couple of reasons that contributed to the lack of capacity were things like frozen seals and ice on fan blades. One generation plant had to shut down and pull of the grid due to a hydrogen alarm. The plant had to be evacuated for safety reasons. Turned out to be a frozen seal on the hydrogen alarm that triggered a false reading so this evacuation and shut down was unnecessary due to one seal. Another plant had ice on the fans blades that are part of the hydro generation system. When the fan kicked on the ice caused the fan blades to be out of balance which sheared the fan off of it's base resulting in a dead generation system until a new fan blade and hub could be built and delivered which takes months. These are just a couple of examples of how missing the little things can turn into something massive.

It's infuriating to be without something we are all used to having no doubt (power, water and/or gas). Could some of these things have been prevented? Some yeah but this was all new weather to many of us including the power generation energy. At home we prepared as best we could but still did not anticipate water freezing in the upstairs bathtub drain line between the first and second floors which busted when the tub was draining. Some things are just really hard to predict in extreme situations like we've all been in.”

Lots of little things add up to one big thing. Coal, Hydro, NG fired Generation plants here not really built to withstand extra cold weather. Not much experience with extra cold weather among the staff so things get missed. Bunches of Extra people in the state in last few years fleeing California, Illinois and other high tax areas stretching already stretched electricity needs. More reliance on capricious energy sources like wind and solar. Add it all up and it’s a massive power deficit disaster for much of Texas. My wife the State Farm agent was in tears yesterday evening with all the busted pipes, flooded homes and with plumbers, water mitigation teams, claims adjusters, and other necessary professionals mostly impossible to find.

[karstopography]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02 ... heres-why/

Another article that goes into detail about the failures of the power generation in Texas. Seems like a fair assessment of the situation.

[Shule]

That's no fun what's going on in Texas and such. I hope things improve soon.