Weather Stuff

[MiniDave]

We had a pretty stiff winter storm come thru a few days ago, more than 100,000 people were without power, and the snow was so heavy and wet that it's broken and uprooted trees all over town...looks like bombs went off the way debris is everywhere.

We've been lucky, our power has stayed on and I have a generator setup if it goes out, so we were prepared in case.....

Not so my friend Don (with the Vtec Pup) he's been without power for 5 days now, so yesterday I took my genset over and we managed to get some heat and lights on. His house is large and has a complex electrical system with all the bells and whistles, including heat pumps for heat. That's a problem because like an A/C unit, heat pumps draw too much current to run on anything but a whole house generator setup. He has two completely separate heat pump systems, but fortunately he had replaced one a few years ago with a conventional system, so I was able to get that one running and making heat. I also managed to get his water heater on - it has fan to vent the combustion fumes, and a circulation pump that runs pretty much all the time. In order to hook into his system, I had him buy a dryer plug and I tied into the system there, giving him up to 30 amps of 220 power. I also ran a couple of 110V extensions into the house to power the water heater and a couple of small electric heaters. My genset is 12,500 watts (about 100 amps) but each circuit is only 15 amps (30 for the 220V) so no one circuit has enough capacity to run an A/C or heat pump. Of course it's loud and uses a lot of gas - 5 gallons is good for about 6 hours runtime.

We got most of the lights on, TV, computers etc. The master suite is on the main heater side, but we got the guest wing warmed up as it has the newer conventional forced air gas furnace.

So he and all their pets are safe and warm-ish for now, but the real storm is still headed our way. The weather guessers are completely at odds over this one, but one thing they all agree on is that it's going to get COLD, well below zero by Saturday. I'm hopeful they can get his power back on before then but while they're working 24/7 there are still a lot of people without heat! Weather guessers think we're going to get rain on Thursday and Friday, changing to ice and then snow as we move into Sat morning. If we get rain and ice, it will knock power out again for many more people as tree branches break and take down lines, pull the meter right off the house and so on.

More as it happens but it could be a real mess this weekend.

[MiniGene]

Yikes!  Stay safe out there.  Good on you for helping your friend out. 

It's always good to have some sort of back up, huh?  My in-laws live in the country in Arkansas and sometimes go through bad ice storms that wreak havoc on the power lines.  They have a furnace but also have a very good working cast iron wood stove.  That thing keeps the entire house nice and toasty!  My parents use a kerosene heater to help heat their house up in south central Alaska.

[gr8kornholio]

Yea if the wind chill Sunday morning here in TX is supposed to be single digits I can only imagine that much north of us.  Think our weather guys map had KC at -9 on Sunday morning.  Maybe time to bail to a hotel or something. 

Be careful with the space heaters and such, it never fails down here when we do get ice and snow and power goes out we get several news stories of people dying of carbon monoxide.

Luckily for us the moisture is supposed to die out Friday night before the cold blast starts Saturday.

[MiniDave]

Update: the furnace came on! It's running on "emergency heat" which since it's gas fired means to me that it's not trying to be a heat pump but instead is running just as a normal forced air gas furnace. Don ran down to get some more gasoline and run a couple of errands and when he got back the house had gone from 52* to a nice, comfy 70!

[MPlayle]

When heat pump systems kick over to "emergency" mode the do indeed act as regular furnaces.  It means it is too cold for them to extract heat from outside, so the "backup" mechanism built in takes over.

When my parents had their last big house, it had heat pumps with electric backup heat.  I learned about how heat pumps work from helping my parents understand and operate theirs.  With higher humidity and heat pumps, you have to also watch that the outside unit does not ice up.

[MiniDave]

Yes, I think every so often they reverse flow again to warm up the outside coil

[MiniDave]

Don got his power back on just a few minutes ago, my neighbor came over with his pole saw so we could drop the branch that had broken, and the power and light co sent 4 trucks over to remove a small branch that had fallen on my power wire to the house. All in all we're pretty well sorted now, just in time for this next big one to hit. They're still calling for ice to start tomorrow night and all day Friday, then start snowing Friday night. Ice is the real problem, if it hits hard enough it will really mess things up.

[gr8kornholio]

Snow covered ice really sucks on roads wires and trees. Remember those days from growing up near Wichita.

[gasmini]

We don't get the bigger amounts of snow anymore around Wichita.
The last snow that MiniDave is talking about here we only got what I call a light frost.
We sent the rest up to the Kansas City area, about 3 hours northeast of us. ;D

[Jims5543]

Sounds like what we deal with here in Florida trying to reason with the hurricane season.  Try going 4 weeks with no power in 100+ heat index, I think I would prefer cold.  No one has fire places and propane space heaters?

How common is a power outage up there?

I would at least have a gas genny.  I was sick of being without power even after a tropical storm so I sucked it up and purchased a whole home generator. Best money ever spent, 17KW of goodness. Runs entire house including AC which we need 10 months a year here.

[MiniDave]

It's not real common that we have outages, but it does happen - that's why I have a genny too.

The problem with power outages in winter is frozen pipes. When that happens you're really in for expensive repairs.

[Jims5543]

It's not real common that we have outages, but it does happen - that's why I have a genny too.

The problem with power outages in winter is frozen pipes. When that happens you're really in for expensive repairs.

Yes but you can use wood, coal, propane and kerosene to make heat.

I cannot do the same to make AC.



I grew up on Long Island NY, we had a wood burning stove in our house, being out in the boondocks it was necessary. 

[MiniDave]

Believe me I know, we get 100+ temps with stupid high humidity in the summer as well, but our summer is only 4-5 months. Of course we also get summer T-storms and tornados to go with the ice and snow storms of the winter!  77.gif

[gr8kornholio]

Yea, totally do not miss KS weather in any way shape or form.  Out of all the places I've lived it definitely has the worst swings from summer to winter.

[Jims5543]

Just spent 3 days in Tulsa, 55° down to 10° with windchill, every one of you are out of your minds.

We tried to walk about a mile Sunday morning in 22° temps, we about died.

[MPlayle]

Arrived in OKC for a work trip.  About got blown over when getting out of the Jeep at the hotel.

[Jims5543]

Sunday morning I was singing Jimmy Buffet, Boat Drinks song.  "I wanna go where it's warm!!"  over and over again.

I'll be damned I wake up this morning to mid 40's in Florida and windy, was not happy.

It is up to 65  now and I like that better.

[MiniDave]

Had to work today - 17* most of the day but warmed up to 24* by mid afternoon. Old, tired cars with corroded battery terminals don't like to start in 17* weather! The wind has been howling all day here too, and now that it's getting dark we're up to 31*, must be a southerly breeze   ::)

[gr8kornholio]

The weather always seems to be terrible when you have the car moving job.  Been crazy windy down here too.  It's out of the south, but it's not helping the temps any.

[Jims5543]

If you are on a PC press and hold down the alt key while typing 248 and you get a degree symbol.

[MiniDave]

I usually use the character map to get other symbols, such as the  £, ¢, ©, ¥ etc, as well as the degree symbol ° but sometimes I just get too lazy and use the asterisk instead.....

Today we've already reached our high temp for the day - 40° - and it's all downhill from here! It won't be too bad, around 18°  tonight and 30° most days and high teens at night, with a bright spot on Sunday when the wind will shift again and it will be almost 50!

The old Midwest saying about if you don't like the weather here, just wait a minute is definitely true for Kansas. That's one of the things I used to love about Sandy Eggo, the nice consistent weather....they didn't really even need weather maps on the evening news - since it really didn't change for weeks or more at a time!

[ve9aa]

Was -20*C here this morning. (up to a balmy -10*C now) and wind at 40-60km/h++
Snowing a titch off and on.  Near blizzard conditions at time when it really whips up.

More windchill than anything.

Not really "Mini weather" (or even MINI weather, though we drive the Binis year 'round, studded tires, heaters blasting, whatever)

77.gif

[Jims5543]

This is a cool real time map regarding wind chill temps.

http://hp2.wright-weather.com/icons/us_chill.gif


I am back in shorts and tshirt here in FloRida, I am happy again.  Its 72 here, sunny and breezy.

I sat at an outside bar for lunch had a beer and shrimp po-boy.  Good to be home.