How's your weather?

[wildcat62]

Raining hard here this morning and has been for most of the night. Wet & muddy. That's Spring on a Kentucky farm. Ohio river is going up fast and forecasted to hit flood stage by Wednesday. But at least it isn't freezing & covered in ice.

[karstopography]

Seasonably Cool here today, about 50 degrees going to 63 by the afternoon. Going to 40 tonight. Funny, this cool down was not in the forecast as late as of Friday-Saturday. Wonder what’s making these weather shifts so hard to get a handle on? Someone told me there’s less data coming from commercial aircraft flying up in the jetstream since commercial air travel has really shrunk during Covid. Generally, the weather people are pretty good out to about a week in advance, on temperatures anyway.

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2021 ... c-heating/

Another look at the recent power shortages in Texas. Texas has added 1.6 million new housing units, most all using electricity to heat, since 2010, almost twice as much as runner up Florida. Texas added about 4 million new residents in that time period. Majority of homes in Texas use electricity to heat the home. Even most natural gas heaters require electricity to work. Heating oil fired boilers so common in New England are nonexistent here. One, there’s no basements here to stash away 300-500 gallon oil tanks.

I wonder if this will spur demand in alternative non electrical dependent heating sources? I have Heard that many people are now looking into the natural gas fired large whole home generators that automatically run when the power goes out. Home solar units are not nearly as big a thing here as they are in some other states, but with the cloudy and snowy conditions of this past event would that have even helped? The large commercial solar power plants really dropped off their output during this past event. I wonder too if this event will change much of anything. Will it be a few heads that roll, that’s happened already, and then back to business as usual? Hope not.

[worth1]

One of the reasons Austin lost water was they had a backup system nobody knew how to put on line.
What a hoot it has been there for 50 years and no one knew how to turn it on.

[bower]

Speaking of weather forecasts, a second storm blew up today and we got no notice of it until yesterday... Howling and snowing until mid afternoon then the sun came out and all the snow slumped off the greenhouse and down off the windows (which were covered in icy lace). I didn't bother to go out shoveling so late in the day, but now I regret! The temperature is going to plummet to -8C so all that wet snow is going to freeze very hard. And staying -4C all day tomorrow, it's not going to thaw again in a hurry. So I am snowcreted in here until..??? what weather comes to soften it up.

[rxkeith]

had a quick hitter storm come through sunday starting right on time just before 10am that dumped
about 5 inches of snow locally. range always varies with terrain. the drive home was slow because my
eyes were having difficulty with depth perception maybe. just too much white flying around messing with
my ability to focus. it is a weird thing to experience. wind chill was below zero monday. temps increased
on tuesday to near 40 degrees. outlook calls for sunny days toward the end of the week with temps in the 30s.
hope here is for an early spring. hope might be all it is, but ya gotta have hope.


keith

[Tormahto]

Monday night it was wind, gust after gust of about 60-70 mph. The roar kept me up most of the night. The next morning my mailbox was missing its door. I took a walk through the neighborhood, and the second mailbox door I found was mine.

[bower]

[mention]rxkeith[/mention] I hear you on the snow driving. I am so thankful to work at home most of the time, and pick my days for driving. One year I was working shifts, days one week and nights the next. A lot of memorable driving experiences after getting off at midnight in the winter. We would all be sleepy enough after 11 pm on shift, but the drive home was so riveting, you're then awake until 4 am....Thankfully never again.
I woke up at sunrise this morning, beautiful reds and then a peach that rose above the trees to the east. The sun through the branches was catching the ice hanging among the snow, like a bundle of flowers and grapes. The expanse of clean snow in my garden was dotted with sparkles and you know it's cold when you get that. But I went out just to take a hack at the front steps and ended up doing not a bad job of the driveway. There was soft snow under the crust of about three inches, for most of it. A few places I couldn't make a dent. Merciful plowman took a run at the end of my driveway and didn't leave me a ridge. So for now I'm not snowcreted for the whole winter at least. What I can't shovel I can drive over, and I know this March stuff, you can drive a car over that and not even leave a track.

[karstopography]

Going to 70 today after a 50 degree start. Next ten days look basically the same with trend towards continuing sunny days and temperatures moving into high 70s and low 60s at night, good tomato weather.

[Growing Coastal]

I see no sun in the forecast till next Monday. Sometimes I think they put the sunny days in forecasts here just so we don't become suicidal with forecasts of endless cloudy days. Even when they say it will when the day comes - no sunshine.
Plant lights on peppers helps.
March has come in like a lion here with lots of high winds so I hope it goes out like a lamb.
Still cool and not very spring-like at all with morning temps at freezing but spring bulbs are showing and crocus is starting to bloom.

[pepperhead212]

It was around average (48°) today, but extremely windy, so it didn't feel like it! And the next 3 days are supposed to be much lower, but eventually, next week, it is supposed to be in the 60s. Crazy weather...

[worth1]

Absolutely shocked at my utility bill this month.
Including trash pickup water and electric it was only $270.
I was expecting a heck of a lot more.
Maybe it was because I turned the heat pump off and ran on emergency heat.
I have no idea.

[pondgardener]

We ended up with 5-6" from this latest storm, but it could have been much worse as my brother 150 miles north of me is experiencing, digging out this morning...spring planting may be delayed a few days

DSL.jpg

[wykvlvr]

Grin [mention]pondgardener[/mention]
about 9 minutes ago the Cheyenne Weather Service posted the 2 day cumulative total of 25.8 inches which breaks the last record of 25.5 which has stood since 1979... and of course we have another day of snow coming... I also heard that Weld and Larimer county have power outages (that rain then snow has everything heavy and wet) Also some in Wheatland reported power outages....
And of course we have another full day of snow expected...

[pondgardener]

[mention]wykvlvr[/mention] I have two brothers in Larimer county and I haven't heard from them since this morning. As wet as this snow was, I hope the roofs can handle the load.

[wykvlvr]

oh and now you have added another worry to my list...
Power outages are happening in parts of Cheyenne now, some folks are having to dig out gas meters and/or furnace vents to restore heating to their houses. Of course as warm as it is lack of heat is not a major problem but that heavy wet snow is.

[bower]

We had that beautiful day yesterday when the sun shone without any showers, temp well above zero shrinking the snow fast! and a gorgeous breeze. Back to a few flurries today and tomorrow the forecast is "2-4 cm of flurries, except 10 cm in heaviest flurries". That's what I call "personal weather".. when everybody else gets 2 cm but you get ten!

[karstopography]

Sunny and 70 for the next 4-5 days. Got maybe one cm of rain with a little line of showers that blew by yesterday. Tied up tomato plants to their bamboo stakes for the first time this Spring.

Meanwhile, the thinkers, planners, doers of Texas are working on ideas for a more reliable electricity grid. Evidently, Elon Musk and company has been doing stuff here near me to make energy more reliable. https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-t ... ity-2021-3

A Big giant battery installation to weather energy disruptions.

Dan Crenshaw wants more nuke plants and I’m for that.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... nergy-grid

The clock is ticking.

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday there were dire warnings about the possibility of very severe weather coming today. Several local school districts closed school for the day except for virtual learning. One moved all classes for today from portable classrooms to somewhere inside the main building but otherwise remained in session for today. Closing of schools on a warning has never happened before. The Weather Channel had us in the TorCon 7 area with nastiness possible around 10am. I've never seen the possibility of tornadoes that high here.

We discussed a few last minute precautions to take should it really look like we'd be socked but haven't done anything yet other than filling a few stock pots with water. Right now it looks like we just might miss the mess. It was 65 degrees all night and it still is with cooler air not here yet. The air is "juicy" and right for t-storms and you never know what the afternoon will bring. However, it usually seems that, at least here, the more dire the warnings, the less chance it happens. We'll see.

[bower]

I saw that worrisome forecast on the news the T storms and tornadoes spinning off a system affecting North Texas, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and later South Carolina. Be safe [mention]GoDawgs[/mention] [mention]Rajun Gardener[/mention] [mention]goodloe[/mention] [mention]JohnJones[/mention] [mention]Fusion_power[/mention] [mention]HenriSportif[/mention] and all our other gardening friends in the south!
We are expecting leftovers from that system by midnight tonight with strong Southerlies, rain and a high of 7C, which can only improve the situation (still snowy), quite a bit of heavy rain but will turn to snow and ice pellets Friday night and leave us 5-10 cm of that and/or a skating rink with temps plummeting to -7C.
Nasty or nice, it is way better than tornadoes. So glad to be spared that. Far north leftover weather is not so bad.
Hereabouts it is very common to have a storm or squalls after St. Patricks Day, called "Sheila's Brush", which is said to be Patrick's wife Sheila sweeping up after his day. I guess this is the 2021 version.

[goodloe]

Had a LOT of rain and some pretty wicked wind at times, but we're all good....