Really, really slippery here

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mo2872 said:
Staying ahead of the accumulation is important in this bitter cold, IMO. Had about 3-4” drifted up on the biggest part of the driveway, so I took care of it now. Took about 15-20 minutes with The Beast. The major accumulation is supposed to come later, so this won’t be the last I see of it today/tonight/tomorrow.
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Sending more your way! Looks like the latest batch is starting all the way down in west Texas, around Abilene.
 
teepot said:
We had a blizzard back about 1970 where I lived in Michigan. Pinckney to be exact. Snowmobiles were the only thing moving. The drifts were 6' and higher across the main road. A county plow tried to open the road but couldn't get up the hill by our house. So he backed up in our driveway and go stuck. He stayed with us for two days until the county sent a grader with a V plow to get him. Now I'm in Nevada. 60 today.
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I remember that storm. After 5 days I built some snowshoes to get 1/4 mi to the main road where my folks lived to get some bread and milk. It was another 4 or 5 days before a grader opened my road.
This year haven't had much of anything, maybe 8 inches total over the last couple weeks in W Mich.
 
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I’ve got freezing rain now, on top of the 3 to 4 ft drifts at the bottom of the driveway. I spent all day yesterday digging out the garage and upper drive way.
I figured I could make it out at the bottom end. I got stuck had to dig my way out. Driving the main roads, one lane only open and lots of cars Buried under drifts and plow spray.
We Spent the afternoon grocery shopping, returning home there was absolutely no way to make it up my driveway.
I share a driveway with the next house over. 20 something young lady digging her car out. I told her what was behind her car was the least of her worries, it was what was at the bottom she needed to worry about. She put her shovel away and went inside.
I put shoe cables on ( first time in the10 or more years owning them) and made a dozen trips the half block from where I had to park to carry the groceries home.
On the last trip a tow truck was coming up the hill, he stopped and asked how it was, (icy and getting worse). He said, nope, not even going to try!
Work just sent message out that 3rd shift operations are suspended, not sure yet on first shift. This is the first time this has ever happened, normally there is always someone there. I was one of seven during one such event, but then I didn’t live on the hill I do now.
I will second the statement, It IS slippery out there!
 
I made the drive in to our other base this morning. It took 20 minutes longer than normal, which was better than I expected. If we really do get a foot of snow this evening, my drive home will be an adventure.
PSX_20210215_081936.jpg
 
And like that it's over for us, three days after the first snowfall. There's plenty of snow on lawns and sidewalks are a bit slippery, but the roads are pretty much all melted out except for slush in places. There's a light rain falling which will help melt everything faster.

Stay warm and safe everyone!
 
We worked a half a shift before the snow moved in and grounded us. I'm glad to be home, but my wife works at least until 11 and I wouldn't be surprised if she has to stay until 3 tonight.

This is appropriate for a good portion of the US right now:
 
boatgeek said:
And like that it's over for us, three days after the first snowfall. There's plenty of snow on lawns and sidewalks are a bit slippery, but the roads are pretty much all melted out except for slush in places. There's a light rain falling which will help melt everything faster.

Stay warm and safe everyone!
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Yep, on par for the PNW, no rain here, but warm enough there is water running under the snow. The neighbor girl and myself spent two hours digging out the lower driveway.
BIL came home with his BMW and made it into the driveway, so all must be good. Only negatives is I have a water drip in the main living room, so I know snow blew into the attic area, an area that has no access without cutting into the ceiling, and my arthritic hands are in agony.
 
It's not just slippery, now, it's dangerously cold. There were rolling blackouts yesterday in OK. Scheduled again for today, for up to two hours. Was watching local news and the power went out there. They were in the dark for several minutes until their generator kicked on. It was - 5 Sun. nite into Mon. morning and -10 overnight last night (right now). It's so cold that wind generators are freezing up; natural gas pipelines and switching equipment are freezing up as well.

HINT: do snow angels laying on your BACK! (not your front!)
 
Therte's a big difference between an ICE storm and a SNOW storm, at least here in central OK. We had an ice storm, back about New Year's. Ice builds up on trees and power lines with bad, bad results. Seems like there wasn't as much build up with the snow. The snow is a lot fluffier and drier due to the (much!) colder air.

ice storm Jan01.jpg

snow storm Feb15.jpg

The willow tree is really loaded down with ice in the top photo. You can see how deep the snow is on the second picture, the curbs are buried.
 
We got 8 inches of snow overnight. A huge snowfall for this area of Ohio. The wife and I grabbed shovels and started on the driveway. I figured 90 minutes to 2 hours with both of us working to clear it. Our driveway is about 140 feet long and we have a turn around pad just to the side of the garage so you can turn around instead of backing down the driveway. The neighbor came over with his tractor just after we started and cleared it in less than 15 minutes.

The neighbor, Dell, is the one we tried to contact to pull out the guy that started this thread. Dell is a nice guy and so is his father-in-law Dennis. Their wives are the ones who are standoffish and wouldn't answer the door the other day. The two couples built the house together as neither of them could have afforded the house on their own.
 
Rolling blackout hit my house. Went to bed and pulled the covers up. Hopefully that's over. Power emergency over for now. I've been waiting to do some baking. Going to make two batches of cornbread, two of cookies and a loaf of blueberry quickbread.
 
David Schwantz said:
Hi Sooner, we get the same ice as you:( We just have warmer boots :)
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Oh, we've got boots. We've also got something you don't: concrete ribbons that twist three or four layers high, up in the cold snowy sky. Once those get snow and ice, that part of the highway is not even good for sledding - TOO slick!
 
Hi Sooner, yup we got them whirly things also. And just so you know, I go to Catoosa twice a week. Been on them there concrete things :)
 
Store shelves in Lubbock are starting to look a little bare, not enough truck traffic I assume. Snowed nearly all day, real fine stuff that made into a nice glaze when driven on. Had some kind of power outage while I was at the hospital all day. When I got back to the trailer this evening it was right at 30 inside. Trying to warm it up a little. Got plenty of means to stay warm while it heats up so no worries.
 
Well, life is interesting here in Fort Worth.

Have had 8 hours of power since Monday at 5am and no power at all in the last 38 hours. All electric house. As you might have heard on the news, rolling blackouts became “directed outages”. Attempts to roll over to other parts of the grid made the whole grid a little unstable, so it has been mostly parked as is for the last 36 hours.

As you have likely heard, massive demand met an unstable supply of power, with lots of generating capacity falling offline due to very high demand and cold related problems with (mostly) the fossil fueled plants. Renewables are actually performing better than expected in these conditions, but are only about 10% of the available power.

A buddy who is an engineer for a generating company related that the Texas electric suppliers were warned in a report from a similar but smaller problem in 2011 that they really needed to winterize their power generators or something just like now would happen. They elected to not spend the money. Sigh.
 
There were some interesting stats in the paper today on the Texas grid. According to the article, the grid was designed for a max load of 67 GW (55.8 DeLoreans). Because of the cold and so many people using electric resistance heaters, demand went up to 69 GW. At the same time, 30 GW of fossil fuel generation and 5 GW of wind generation went offline, leaving the state where it is now. The fossil fuel generation offline was mostly gas-fueled, largely because of supply shortages from pipelines freezing or increased demand. There was also some impact from plants being offline for maintenance in preparation for the normally-busier summer AC season.
 
Some of the generation failures are also from frozen sensors on the equipment and the like.

Cold related failures like gas pipes freezing and sensors freezing are preventable if installations are properly winterized. Yes, hindsight is always 20-20.

Zero doubt that the responsible parties will have reasonable sounding excuses as this plays out, some of which might be related to the truth.
 
boatgeek said:
There were some interesting stats in the paper today on the Texas grid.
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I have had my RPi collecting data from ERCOT for several years now. There is a gap on Monday from when my power was out of course. It wasn't so much of a roll as thud with one long (cold) stretch of 28 hours without power. Dug out on old goose down sleeping bag (top of the line Frostline kit as I recall) which if anything was too warm. :)
Data updated daily here
Besides the incredible load shed you can also see the accumulated time error as the line frequency faded due to the imbalance between supply and load.
 
UhClem said:
I have had my RPi collecting data from ERCOT for several years now. There is a gap on Monday from when my power was out of course. It wasn't so much of a roll as thud with one long (cold) stretch of 28 hours without power. Dug out on old goose down sleeping bag (top of the line Frostline kit as I recall) which if anything was too warm. :)
Data updated daily here
Besides the incredible load shed you can also see the accumulated time error as the line frequency faded due to the imbalance between supply and load.
Click to expand...
Well, that tells the story of how much load is being shed. And pretty clearly shows that while the drop in wind power was part of the problem just before shutdown, it wasn't the biggest part.
 

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