How's the Weather Today?

[94touring]

Out of curiosity looked that house up this morning and the price has been lowered 20k. 

[MiniDave]

Have you already looked at it? Is it a project or ready to move in?

Cause I don't know if you can handle any more projects!   

[94touring]

Minor projects!  Move in ready. 

[Brit_in_TX]

Speaking of homes, the real estate market is still out of control.....I have friends wanting to move into Overland Park to be closer to their office, they've made offers on two homes in the last couple of months and didn't get either. On one they offered 40% over the asking price and someone beat them out with a cash offer that was $10K higher, and this was on a fairly spendy house - final sale price was $450K. They've seen houses offered for $300K that needed "everything" done inside and out and they sell within one day for $75-100K higher than asking. It's nutso out there!

That has been going on down here for the last 3 years.  That is one of the reasons I am still living in an apartment.

The main reason house prices are continuing to rise in the San Antonio and Austin area is the continued population increase in this area.  This coupled with a lack of new houses being built (which is hard to believe if you drive around) is keeping house prices high, even with the interest rates. My realtor friend does not believe there will be a significant reduction in house prices around here due to the undersupply of housing stock.

Also your opinion on house prices really depends where you come from.  I currently live in a 3 bed, 2 car garage, 2000 sqft house, which I bought for $250K in Jan 2021.  In the UK I lived in a 700 sqft 2 bed, no garage house which was valued at a similar price.  So I think housing in Texas in cheap.  My friend lives around 1 hour outside of London in a 5 bed, 1750 sqft, 3 story house, with no garage and that is currently valued around $1 million.

[ve9aa]

I don't know how you Southerners do it. After a little more than an hour doing some moderate labour outside, I was ready for cccold A/C and a Coke.

[MPlayle]

27.6*C is only 82*F!  That is like our overnight lows this summer.  It would be fantastic to have that as our daytime high, but we are not likely to see that happen until maybe November at the rate we are going.

We are currently 104*F (40*C) in San Antonio, Texas.

[MiniDave]

Yes, location and availability have a lot to do with prices.....here in the middle of the great flyover prices have traditionally been pretty reasonable. And while nothing like what my former house in Sandy Eggo has done, as a percentage it's very similar. But in terms of affordability, a LOT more people can qualify for a $400K house than a $1.25 mill....which is why houses in my hood are all of a sudden selling like the proverbial hotcakes, even with so much higher interest rates.

[MiniDave]

So, we got a little snow last night - probably 5-6" of heavy wet stuff. It's not too bad to shovel, seems pretty wet at ground level so you can just push it, but lifting the gob at the end is a pretty good workout. I've got most of the driveway done now......I do the bottom half first, knock the snow off the cars and move them to the clean area, then do the top 1/3 or so. Heart doc does NOT want me doing this, but I take it slow and easy as I can and still get it done.

The boys were not excited about going out into the snow to do their business this morning.....right now they're both curled up on the couch with me.

My phone's latest update has screwed up how I can transfer pics from it to my computer, so it'll be a bit before I can upload pics.

[MiniDave]

Power went out about noon, usually the power company has an app that lets you know the approximate time they'll have it back on but today it showed a massive area, so I figured we were in for a long cold day. I lit the fireplace and made sure all the doors and windows were closed tightly.....

After two hours I decided I better get the genset out of the new shed.....I had to drag it thru the 6-8" deep snow from the shed all the way across the yard to the back door of the shop where the cable connector is - it's really heavy - 12500 watts - Once there I got it fired up and as it warmed up I went to the basement to get the cable. I also knew I had to change out the end as the last time I used it was at Don's house and he had a different receptacle. I had just gotten to the back door when the lights came on! Never fails......

I had to get the young, healthy, strong young neighbor guy to help me drag it back up the hill and into the shed.....no way I could have done it by myself.

While I had my snow boots on I re-filled the bird feeder and OMG there must be 100 birds of all sizes, colors and descriptions flitting around it and on the ground under it. It's funny, the little ones seem to grab a beak full of seed and flip them on the ground for the other birds - either that or they're just wading thru to get the ones they like! 

[cstudep]

We had somewhere between 9 and 10 inches up here. I should have measured before the wind started blowing. It's been a while since we have had a snow like this. Power flickered off about the time yours did, and I thought we were in for a long day, but it came right back on after a minute or 2, thankfully.

I'll take a foot of snow over 1/4"+ ice any day, last time we had a bad ice storm we were without power for over a week. Felt like I turned Amish by the time the power came back on.

We filled up our bird feeders yesterday as well and we now have birds galore for the dogs to stand at the window and bark at.

[94touring]

My truck barely started this morning.

[skmini]

Block heaters and battery maintainers.

[BruceK]

Block heaters and battery maintainers.

   Crazy cold.  Wow.  Worst cold I experienced was -24F     (-31C) when I lived in Chicago in the 1980s. And that was like a once in a decade thing.

[skmini]

This is not unusual for us in January/February.  Which is why we've all got block heaters and parking lots have outlets to plug them in to.

[MiniDave]

Well, if any of you watched the Chiefs game you know how cold it's been there in KC!

We left for North Carolina on last Wed and had no issues driving down, a little rain but nothing much.
we went to my grandson's wedding and I was pleasantly surprised to see so many of my extended family members there! I got to spend time with many great nephews and nieces that I had only seen in pics before (thank you Facebook!) as well as my kids, grands and great grands....

We stayed over the day after the wedding and were supposed to head for home on Monday morning, but a storm had moved into the area north of us and Knoxville, Nashville, Lexington and Louisville were all closed. We had hoped to go today but conditions were even worse.....friends in Knoxville said most roads were closed and traffic was stalled, even on 40 hiway.

We needed to get home as I was out of pills, the boys were out of food and we were done with hotel life.....so we headed south - we went to Atlanta, then west to Birmingham and made it all the way to Winfield, Al. The last 40 miles were in the dark and the roads were iced over badly which made for several hours of slow white knuckle driving. We found a hotel that would take us and the doggos, and the only place open for food was a cafe in the corner of the Chevron station across the street - but the food was fresh cooked and surprisingly good.

We've been advised that the roads north of us in Mississippi are glare ice according to the few truckers that have made it thru, it's been suggested that we wait till noon or so to leave to give the road crews time to salt and plow the roads. We're 9-10 hours drive from home and if we leave at noon we won't make it home tomorrow by nightfall (I don't see well at night) so chances are good we'll be in a hotel tomorrow night too, and another snow storm is supposed to hit on Thursday!

Adventures in winter driving!

The boys are being real troopers and mostly just sleep and the car is driving well with no problems, as long as it will start in the morning we'll see how far we get. It's down to the low teens tonight where we landed.....

[94touring]

I was wondering if you started the trip back.

[MiniDave]

The next morning we loaded up the Allroad and headed north/west to Mississippi - the roads all the way to the border were clean and dry and we hummed right along, 200ft inside the Mississippi border we were in one lane behind miles of trucks making all of 30-40 mph, even tho the right lane was completely clear and dry. Made for a VERY long day.....we made it to Memphis which had anywhere from 6" to a foot of snow on the ground, main hiways were slushy but plowed, surface streets were plowed but hard packed snow.

We found our way around Memphis (I hate driving there even in good weather!) and finally were on clear cleanly plowed and salted roads in very northeastern Arkansas and then north into the bootheel of Missouri, where we holed up for the night in Poplar Bluff.

Today was the final slog home and we arrived at about dark this evening. I know the boys were happy to get out of the car and back at home, both had been well off their game all week and both ate a healthy bowlful tonight!

We got home just in time for another blast of arctic air to come thru over the next two days, but for the short term at least - I'm going nowhere unless I absolutely have to!

I unloaded the car, carried everything in, filled the empty bird feeder and bath and now I'm DONE for the night!

[MiniDave]

We're supposed to get "wintry mix" tonight, and starting Monday night we're supposed to get rain - every day the rest of the week!

It's only going to be in the low 30's so I hope it doesn't freeze down at night and leave us with ice.

The body shops LOVE this time of year around here!

Oh, and Clancy wrecked a Dodge truck he had borrowed from a friend going home from shop night at Prather racing - he missed the first bambi, but the second one got him. He wasn't hurt, the truck was totaled.