[subego]

High today here is supposed to be 74°.

[mindwaves]

Where I live, there are supposed to be several typhoons by now, but not a single one has hit or even came near here. Huge lack of rain. Very unusual weather.

[Thorzdad]

Currently 13°. Wind chill -5°. The heatpump is just humming along, keeping us nice and warm.

[andi*pandi]

I was in Florida. They were complaining about the cold. High fifties felt like shorts weather.

[Thorzdad]

Stay safe, Texas.

[subego]

Oooh... car in ditch alert.

[Thorzdad]

At least five people were killed and dozens were injured in a crash that spread over nearly a mile and involved between 70 and 100 vehicles on an icy Interstate 35 near Fort Worth. And that was before the snow hits.

[ghporter]

Well yesterday it got really, really cold for San Antonio. It started out at about 30F and worked its way down...while a light drizzle made things more interesting.

And overnight it snowed. Not just a little. I got 5-6” of dry, fluffy (but not packable) snow on top of anywhere from 1-1 1/2” of ice, and that’s just on my driveway. The streets would have had more stored heat, which means the ice would have started forming more slowly, so it’s likely to be more like 2” of ice there.

Since San Antonians, as a rule, have issues driving on mildly damp pavement, having actually hazardous driving conditions is quite problematic. Just about every major road is either closed or restricted, and everyone from the city to the county to the state highway department is telling everyone to “stay the $&#* home and off the $&#*ing roads!” So far everyone seems to be substantially more OK with doing that than staying home to avoid COVID.

I technically live within “walking distance” of work. But our current temperature is 13F, which The Weather Channel says “feels like -1”, and I don’t have ANY clothes that would be even slightly appropriate to prevent frostbite (for real) on the 30 minute walk there. I also don’t trust the local 4X4 owners to not accidentally smoosh me to chunky salsa because their 4X4 knows more about physics than they do.

So my wife and I are having another cup of coffee, and hoping the utility company doesn’t have to enact a “critical conservation rolling outage” in our area. Electric heat is pretty common here, and there’s way more demand right now than usual. We have gas heat, but we need electricity to circulate that heated air.

[Thorzdad]

My heatpump has been running nearly continuously for the past two+ weeks.

[subego]

Chicago reporting snowpocalypse.

[Laminar]

Please excuse the awful SYNC 2 interface.

[subego]

I can excuse it, but that won’t make it go away.

[andi*pandi]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

So my wife and I are having another cup of coffee, and hoping the utility company doesn’t have to enact a “critical conservation rolling outage” in our area. Electric heat is pretty common here, and there’s way more demand right now than usual. We have gas heat, but we need electricity to circulate that heated air.

I have family near galveston and they've been out of power and heat for 30 hours. I saw in Austin that even if you could get to a hotel safely, the prices are jacked up to $999 per night.

[subego]

Whenever I’m in that situation, I splurge and go to the hotel charging $1,000.

[andi*pandi]

get 10 of your neighbors to chip in and join you, hang out in the lobby.

[Doc HM]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

get 10 of your neighbors to chip in and join you, hang out in the lobby.

or join Ted Cruz in Mexico. I'm sure he'd be happy to have a load of constituents join him there. Oh wait he's come home.

Also now enjoying the mental image of refugee texans flooding into warmer Mexico.

[ghporter]

I've been offline for a couple of days - I didn't lose power, I've just been working my asterisk off. The incredibly abnormal weather here in San Antonio meant that instead of having plenty of staff, my hospital has had a very short staff for several days, and those of us who could get in worked extra long and treated a whole lot more than our normal number of patients.

Anyway, first off, my neighborhood never lost power. We're on a power distribution branch that also serves hospitals, so we weren't affected by the rotating blackouts.

Second, the "rotating" part here in San Antonio was not so rotating. Some areas had "rotating power on" situations. My son's house was dark except for occasional (and very brief) periods of power for about three days.

And then there's the issue with water. Some pumping stations were down long enough to allow storage tanks to go so low that there was a concern about contamination. Soooooo... thousands of people without power were told to boil their water for safety. That warning was lifted for most of San Antonio some time yesterday, but there are suburbs that aren't out of it yet.

We had some decrease in wind power generation - not much. But we had a LOT of gas and coal plants go offline because they (or the wells that provide the gas) weren't winterized. Totally the providers' fault, and totally preventable. Shame on them for putting millions of people at risk of hypothermia.

And shame on Ted for "bravely running away" while his constituents shivered, and maybe some died. To Cancun. To the freaking Ritz-Carlton hotel in Cancun. The Ritz is a very fancy, and very expensive hotel; probably more expensive than any other hotel in Cancun. (Privilege much?). And his excuse? His daughters' school was closed and "they wanted to go to Cancun with friends." Yeah. A "leader" says "sorry girls, but I have work to do," even if he doesn't have direct control of whatever would help in the situation...

On the flip side, Beto O'Rourke (who almost unseated Ted in the mid-terms) organized phone banks that contacted around 3/4 of a million elderly Texans and provided support and assistance as needed. And AOC, who isn't even a Texan, raised millions to support freezing Texans.

That's not about politics, it's about how poorly Texas officials have handled this event, and how others have had to step up.

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

We had some decrease in wind power generation - not much. But we had a LOT of gas and coal plants go offline because they (or the wells that provide the gas) weren't winterized. Totally the providers' fault, and totally preventable. Shame on them for putting millions of people at risk of hypothermia.

Per the state's own accounting*, the wind farms actually generated more power than they expected at this time of the year under normal circumstances.

* According the actual agencies keeping track of these things. Not according to the governor.

[subego]

Over 40° here, so shorts weather!

[Thorzdad]

54° here in Indy! Hitting the pool!!!

[subego]

Watch out for sunburn!

[Doc HM]

Texas: Your power infrastructure is broken. Your energy market is stupendously broken. And your choice of leaders is borderline self-harming.

Wow.

[ghporter]

Yeah, most of us are aware of that, Doc. Unfortunately the political system is rigged to reinforce the incumbents (legally, through our really whack state constitution), so “I care much more about donors’ bucks than Texans” politicians, starting with Governor Abbot, basically get a free pass to goober up whatever they touch.

[andi*pandi]

Well this muggy heat wave in NE can just go back to wherever it came from. This week: 98, 98, 95, 89, 78. Add the humidity feels like over 100 and soup.

[Thorzdad]

Welcome to summer in Indiana, andi!

[Thorzdad]

Christmas day forecast in Indy: High in the low 60s and rain.
I’m not a snow fan at all, but this is just weird.

[subego]

40s and rainy tomorrow, but right now it’s 50.

[MacNNFamous]

No snow. Lots of snowmobiles. Depressed AF. Going to plug into the matrix (VR) and pretend I'm somewhere else.

[subego]

I’m not objecting to the warmth, but the pit of winter solstice always makes me cranky.

[ghporter]

Our forecast calls for a high in the low 80s on Christmas. That would have been OK - even great - when we were stationed in Panama. Not so much for San Antonio.

[andi*pandi]

We had a dusting of snow then rain. Hoping it's snow up north in NH for our NYE ski trip.

[Laminar]

64 and sunny on Christmas Eve. Neighbors were out in t-shirts and shorts driveway drinking. Saw a new Bronco cruising the neighborhood with the top open.

Back in my day we trick-or-treated in snowpants because we had snow by Halloween.

[ghporter]

An old saw about where I grew up - Southeastern Michigan - was that your Halloween costume had to accommodate either shorts or a snow suit. ‘Cause you never knew what the end of October would bring…but it was either still warm (for about 4 or 5 days) or it was already quite cold and maybe snowing.

Yesterday didn’t quite get to the 80s as predicted, but it didn’t miss by much. I wore shorts and a tee shirt. Today started foggy and in the lower 60s, but should beat the high yesterday. We won’t need to water our outside plants today. But our avocado trees (still short little guys) are budded and may bloom around New Years…. Yet another “thing that makes you go hmmmm” about the climate.

[subego]

Halloween used to be a variable in Chicago, but it’s shifted to cold and windy for years now.

Same deal with May. Used to be half nice, now it mostly sucks.

[ghporter]

Yesterday didn’t live up to the predicted high. It got to about 77F in the afternoon, and didn’t stay there for long. Importantly, it’s been damp. Not just “humid,” but damp. This morning was in the 60s, and not that chilly, but the foggy/damp sense made it quite yucky.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Kind of time for you people to stop complaining about the weather now. Those of us from actual northern climates remain completely unimpressed. Buy some Arc’teryx and move on.

[subego]

Phun Phact: Chicago average low in December and January is colder than Toronto.

Amusingly, the brand people swear by here is Canada Goose.

Unimpressed people wear cheap layers.

[ghporter]

Yesterday got up to the upper 70s; the weather guessers haven’t been particularly precise lately, possibly because they depend on patterns, and we haven’t had a pattern anything like this to base guesses on.

Today again started in the mid to low 60s. Not quite as damp or foggy though.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Originally Posted by subego 

Phun Phact: Chicago average low in December and January is colder than Toronto.

Amusingly, the brand people swear by here is Canada Goose.

Unimpressed people wear cheap layers.

Canada Goose is definitely for city posers, yeah.

[subego]

Snow! Snow! It’s SNOOOOOW!!!

[Laminar]

All we got was freezing rain. Might get some white stuff tomorrow.

[ghporter]

The last several days started out foggy, drizzly, and generally yucky. They’d progress to clearing in the afternoon, and warn up to the upper 70s-low 80s.

Today started out clear, and stayed that way. It got to 84 or 85, but the lower humidity meant it was much more pleasant.

Yeah, December 30th. About that. I enjoyed the change, but it bugged me.

We are supposed to have a cooling trend over the weekend, with highs in the 50s and 60s most of next week. We’ll see…

[subego]

We snapped back to borderline fall weather, but the forecast says that’s pretty much gone come January.

[subego]

Windchill is -1°. This just started and it can already go fuck off.

[Thorzdad]

Wind chill down here in Indy this morning is a balmy 2. I suspect it went below zero at sometime overnight. High today is a whopping 16 with a windchill of 3. I hate winter.

[subego]

Aaaand, -16° wind chill.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Sounds like you need some Canada Goose….

[subego]

More like long underwear.

I’m debating because I’m still going to be 90% inside today.

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by subego 

Aaaand, -16° wind chill.

That's what you get for living next to an inland ocean. Chill is a moderate -9 here this morning.

[andi*pandi]

A real snow day 10" so far.

I feel like pretending I can't drive to work and make cocoa and watch movies all day. What work from home? That's not possible!