To All My Canadian Friends...

Good Lord man! Tell the damn dog to take itself out.

 

She has dog doors, so comes and goes as she pleases.

I don't take her out in -30, but -25 and warmer and we head out daily for a 5k walk (or trail run, which I just took up) in the forest.

Like most Winnipeger's and many Canadians, if we let a little cold weather stop us from leaving the house, we would be stuck inside for 4-5 months a year.

We had an amazingly warm January but are getting crushed here in February. Coldest on record from what I know. We just finished 7-8 days where it didn't get warmer than -20c (-4f). It's warming up tomorrow to -minus teens....woohoo.

She loves it!

 

Quebec is where the Frenchies live.

 

And, I haven't seen any transmission "cooler" complaints in a while

 

What’s the best lift/tires for polar vortex mpg’s?

 

Why would I be mad? At least they can play during all this Covid stuff.

 

In all honesty, I miss the snow and cross country skiing with my dog. There was a forest across from where I grew up in Northern Michigan with hills and a creek - it was pretty awesome to strap on the skis, grab the dog and just cruise around the woods, making our own tracks.

Thats the butt-sucker about all of this shit weather down here. We're getting all of the cold without any of the perks. But the BBQ is good.

It looks beautiful where you are.

 

That's a good point.

 

Sorry, I was thinking Quebec was in Ontario. But I guess it's "Quebec City, Quebec"? Do they speak a version of "Canadian French" like the Louisiana Creole? Do they all wear fancy berets and have tiny mustaches?

 

I picture all women from QC to look like Mitsou. Maybe it's because I was a teen when this came out and I was living in Ottawa, right across from Hull QC.

This was all over Canadian airwaves and MuchMusic, but I'm guessing it never hit USA radio or MTV.

 

So it's a city of french speaking prostitutes... a Canadian Amsterdam.

 

Montreal is for sure.

 

Used to be. This was real:


And y’all lost.

 

Only the women have the little moustaches !

 

So it did this over night here lol.

 

I posted on the home improvement thread but this was yesterday morning. Sounds like two more storms coming this way tonight and tomorrow. The state has been doing rolling blackouts. 10 minutes of electricity, 30 minutes without - over and over. We've been able to stay off of that so far because we share a power grid with a hospital and a police station. A lot of people dying trying to stay warm. This is such a mess. The State needs to figure some thing out. Oh, on top of all this, the State Board in charge of Electricity decided they need to raise rates.

 

Was it a state board decision or are they set by supply and demand?

 

State Board decided to go the supply and demand route. I don't know if we are on the news at all up there but there are whole areas that don't have electricity in Houston and Austin. ERCOT (the board) told the cities they need to cut back on a certain amount of their energy usage but they can't cut off grids with hospitals or other essential services on them. So Austin and Houston had to shut off power to neighborhoods completely because there is no way to roll their blackouts without shutting down a grid that hosts an essential service. A lot of talk is that the Wind Turbines failed the state because they froze up. The reality is that the turbines only supply about 6% of the energy they are talking about not having access too. We don't winterize our natural gas lines down here and apparently the big lines coming from the Permian Basin froze up.
Anyways, the kick in the ass is that as many people are without power and have been for days (and not knowing when it'll be back on again) ERCOT decides to announce they are going to raise the cost of electricity because of all of the "demand."
The news had a picture of the line of cars in Houston waiting to get a burger at Burger King because so many people haven't been able to have a hot meal. You know it's bad when Burger King has a line...

 

Now, you got me going. That story about pipelines freezing up sounds like bs to me. Pipelines are buried like 6' deep; it can be zero degrees surface air temperature, but considerably warmer at six feet. If the surface facilities are freezing, that's engineering oversight since Texas has always experienced freezing temps.

My opinion is ERCOT is allowing the electrical industry to forego costly generating expansions while covering their *** (admittedly in poor fashion) for the shortfall. Texas has energy crises on both ends of the temperature extremes. Efficient management of the available capacity by denying customers necessary power with rolling blackouts is a band-aid, not the solution. Texas IS NOT California, and it pisses me off that Texas can't manage this energy "shortage".

The electric tycoons waited until someone asked the magic question: "How much are we going to have to pay to have electric power when we need it?" They better get some generating plants off the drawing board, because Texas demand is growing daily...it can not be "managed". Let's see...coal? (no that's out); nuclear? (oh, hell no.); natural gas? (Yeah, but it pours so much carbon into the atmosphere.); solar panels? (Hmm, maybe, but we'll have to reduce land allotted for agriculture. Food...that'll probably be the next crisis). The '50s and '60s were better; the Greatest Generation was still running stuff instead of freezing in old age homes.

Went out to check my aerobic septic tank this morning to make sure these "Winter games" hadn't disrupted the scheduled nightly effluent pump out. (Now, that failure would be a local disaster!) Wednesday morning it was 6 degrees on my back porch, but got up to mid-twenties. Found everything with the septic tank normal, no alarms and no high level. Granted, septic tanks generate their own heat. I found the covers free of snow, and the snow melted back from the covers. Plus, the septic tank is buried...like 6+ feet deep at the bottom, with pump system piping maybe a foot deep.

Today, we're getting power for about an hour on and an hour off. We've blown through a month supply of propane in 2-3 days. With propane tank at 14%, we've gone into Apollo 13 survival mode. Thermostat is set to 50 degrees in the northside Casita for the pipes, and the main thermostat is turned off in the house. It got down to 52 deg in the house last night, but that's easily survivable by adding clothing layers. We also have water (many do not), and cell service if the phone batteries are charged. We have it better than the cities. My son in Coppell (Dallas) had 45 degrees inside his house for like 20 hours. Similar experience in parts of Houston.

 

I know they talk about the Texas winter storm every morning on my way to work....way up here in Winnipeg.

Stay safe down there. Even though it isn't what we get on a regular basis, you guys are not prepared or set up for it, which makes it dangerous.

 

My stepdaughter is in Austin. The power was turned off at her apartment 1:30am Monday and hasn't been turned on since. She and her boyfriend grabbed her dog, loaded up what food they could in backpacks and walked 3 miles to his apartment. He had garbage bags on his feet.
He had power but they turned off his water last night because so many pipes were bursting in his complex. This morning, they lost their heat.
My neighbor just called and he had a pipe burst. He had the water off to his house since Sunday but tried to turn it on for a bit yesterday and no water came out. It was warmer today so I told him to turn the water back on and keep all of his faucets open so he could get on the plumbers list. Looks like his hot water line had been frozen and cracked.
This is such a mess - we've been fortunate so far. John, I don't know which side of "Weird" you are at but if you are close to Bastrop and can make it to Smithville, I have extra space heaters and you can use one.

 

Thanks, Joel, but we're out west closer to Marble Falls. I'm just bitchin'. The thing with the propane is we could run it down to zero when the electric is on, but it's not going to make that much difference inside. We've made good use of the fireplace. I'm tight; if I run the propane completely dry, then I have to pay them money to "inspect" my system.

Nah, we're in the home stretch now. Getting up to 34 today...stuff is beginning to melt. Hmmm...power has been on longer than a hour, maybe a good sign.

 

Great! I think it's supposed to get back down to 18 again Friday morning so stay safe and warm. I think 60's are coming this weekend.

 

We had the folks in a Texas refinery call us up a few years ago in a panic asking how to control their process after an instrument froze up and wasn't reading.

"Uhh, the same thing we do all the time in winter, put the control valve in manual..."

 

Yeah, but you can't sleep on graveyards if you have to constantly keep an eye on the pressures, levels, flow rates, and things. I'm sure that was an "Uh...What?!" moment when they learned about "manual control".

This bs with ERCOT happened previously in winter about five? years ago. Ironically, their excuse for that episode: Texas generating plants are not designed for the colder weather, so their steam tracing froze up and knocked plants off-line. (No, maybe, it might have been water condensate freezing in the control air lines? ) That vision of a 1940s plant with steam tracing and those leaking, spewing condensate traps always needing maintenance was the beginning of skepticism for me.

 

Apparently there was a big freeze back in 89 and they said they needed to fix everything (winterize) but they obviously never did it.

It's funny how turbines and solar works in the coldest places in the world but when it fails here, it's because they are shit. It's not working here because people/corporations with shitloads of money dropped the ball so they could make even more money.

I'm hearing stories about people in North Texas running out of firewood and burning their fence slats, cabinet doors, and furniture to keep warm.

Our power blinked at 4:30 this morning so we were lucky. Unfortunately, there's a lot of ice on the power lines and tree limbs around here, I'm not sure if we'll make it through tomorrow with more ice on the way. Neighbors on both sides of me had their pipes explode. One of them had their customer shutoff fail but I was able to close the city's shutoff for her. That's every house on our side of the street that have had their pipes blow. We are now the water supplier for our neighbors.

My stepdaughter is stuck in Austin - I tried to get her and her boyfriend to head out this morning because it went above freezing. Another storm coming tonight and she's without heat or water. Depending on what happens tonight, I may head out in the morning in the 4Runner to pick them up. Her boyfriend has a Camaro and a work truck. He's from Dallas and has no experience driving in this stuff. My dilemma is that if I get stuck out in Austin, there's nobody to take care of my family here. Such a damn mess - and I'm just venting.

We have it so much better than most people in this state. I'm watching the news and seeing the lines at the grocery stores. When I was at Lowes yesterday, everybody was rolling generators out or buying insulation. I was getting funning looks for buying a new kitchen faucet. Even the checkout guy was looking at me funny. People three blocks up from me are without power because they are on a different grid (we share with a hospital, city hall, and the police station). I'd open our doors but I have a bone marrow disease that causes me to have exceptionally high platelets - whether you believe in it or not, I can't risk getting covid.

Anyways, forget about inhaling, if you believe in God, please pray for the people down here. If you don't, please send good thoughts. I'm afraid that when things thaw this weekend, it's only going to be the beginning.

 

Man. Just catching up on your story/thread, Taqui. I feel bad about my earlier comments now. Didn’t age well at all. Sorry.

You guys stay safe down there. You and the good people of Texas are in my thoughts and prayers.

 

No need to apologize at all, my friend - nobody knew this was going to happen and I thought what you said was pretty funny. This is just crazy and it shouldn't have ever happened. It's not my fault, it's not your fault. Our state government and this whole "We are Texas, we don't need anybody else" attitude finally screwed itself.

Right now the hospitals in Austin are hurting because they have no water pressure and they can't run their boilers. One of the hospitals, which is the main trauma hospital, had to hand out baggies for their employees to go to the bathroom in. They are trying to evacuate their 300 patients to other hospitals.

I'm a fixer at heart. I will kill myself trying to fix things and I try to be proactive because it's just the way I am. Hell, that's why we own a Tundra and a 4-runner. I bundle up and walk around the outside of the house every few hours to make sure the freeze misers are functioning on the spigots and that the water heater's condensate pipe isn't freezing up. I made a "ice melt" out of isopropyl alcohol, dish soap and water and I've been spraying it into the pipe every night. I wake up about every 2 hours and walk the down stairs, checking the faucets and getting water out of the fridge to make sure it doesn't freeze up and bust again.

I saw that a storm was coming so I ordered heaters in case our heat pumps fail. I knew my pipes froze and were probably going to bust so I bought some cutoff valves. I bought a bunch of my favorite frozen pizzas last week because I knew if the power went out, I could cook them on my gas grill. I've got 5 gallon buckets of water standing by in a bathtub and drinking water in other containers. I have fire logs for our fireplace and tons of chips and stuff for snacks if all of our foodstuffs fail. But all of this prep was supposed to be for one storm, we've had probably 3 or 4 train on through. At this point we are okay but so many people aren't.

I'm rambling - I can't wait for the weekend to get here so I can crawl under the house one last time to check for issues and then sleep without worrying about waking up to a shit storm.

Again, thanks for the apology but there is none needed. Hopefully our state will learn from this (but I doubt it, it's much easier to point fingers than to actually fix things) and I'll be able to proudly wear a "SNOVID-21 Survivor" t-shirt.

 

Hope y'all are doing ok. I didn't mean for this weather to get so bad. This is all a plot by the free thinking, gun owning Canucks to turn the free, gun loving yet hotter than hell southern US into a habitable place before we stage our infiltration/invasion.