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subego · Nov 7, 2020, 08:14 AM

High today here is supposed to be 74°.

mindwaves · Nov 17, 2020, 10:25 PM

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 · Dec 24, 2020, 07:12 PM

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

andi*pandi · Dec 30, 2020, 06:49 PM

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

Thorzdad · Feb 13, 2021, 07:56 PM

Stay safe, Texas.

subego · Feb 14, 2021, 01:40 AM

Oooh... car in ditch alert.

Thorzdad · Feb 14, 2021, 09:17 AM

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 · Feb 15, 2021, 10:59 AM

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 · Feb 15, 2021, 04:05 PM

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

subego · Feb 16, 2021, 09:22 AM

Chicago reporting snowpocalypse.

Laminar · Feb 16, 2021, 10:21 AM

Please excuse the awful SYNC 2 interface.

subego · Feb 16, 2021, 11:01 AM

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

andi*pandi · Feb 16, 2021, 01:50 PM

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 · Feb 16, 2021, 02:54 PM

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

andi*pandi · Feb 17, 2021, 04:45 PM

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

Doc HM · Feb 19, 2021, 12:13 PM

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 · Feb 21, 2021, 01:28 PM

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 · Feb 21, 2021, 01:58 PM

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 · Feb 24, 2021, 01:12 PM

Over 40° here, so shorts weather!

Thorzdad · Feb 24, 2021, 01:40 PM

54° here in Indy! Hitting the pool!!!

subego · Feb 25, 2021, 10:29 AM

Watch out for sunburn!

Doc HM · Feb 26, 2021, 12:45 PM

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

Wow.

ghporter · Mar 7, 2021, 04:08 PM

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.