OT---Caught Up in Winter's Fury!!!

[TOOL MAN]

NWS has just placed Connecticut on Full Alert....we are at DEFCON-4.....CODE-RED!!!
6-8" of snow expected!! Can you freakin' believe this? A snow storm in February in New England....where is ol' Al Gore now???
State workers told not to report. Schools closed. Tandem trailer truck ban on all highways. State Police urging all non-essential travel to cease. No doubt power will be lost for at least 6 to 8 months. Food supplies running critically short.

I just returned from our local supermarket. It looked like a casting call from, "The Walking Dead!!!" I don't know what got into me but I left with 11 gallons of milk and 14 loaves of bread!! When I was checking- out it suddenly dawned on me that we have NO KIDS and my wife is lactose intolerant!! No matter. I can use the bread to fill in any cracks around my doors and windows. Great protection from the impending POLAR VORTEX. Those 6 to 8" will bury us for weeks. Guess we could always use the stale bread to make French Toast for the neighbors or as a last resort, I can always churn the milk into butter. Great patch lube.

Thanks to the 314 new laws in the Nutmeg State, I'm out of any modern ammo BUT I do have plenty of .45 cal. round ball and 2 cans of 3F for my flinter. Plenty of possum in the back yard, that should get us through if the venison supply dwindles. Doubt you will hear anymore from me until late Spring. 6 to 8" on the way! Siberia at our doorstep!

Jesus H. Chr#@$, what has happened to our once, hardy New England stock??? Somewhere along the line the gene pool has become very diluted. Weather is now the top news story of the day. 6 to 8" coming. Doppler radar now linked to total paralysis. What a sad state of affairs!!

[bbman3]

North East Georgia has had some rough weather.Sleet,freezing rain,snow! I know how Alaska weather is now! I pray we return to Georgia weather by the weekend.Thank God we still have power! Bobby

[Researcher]

Back in May of 1977 my Wife and I made our first trip into New England. We camped in southern New Hampshire then sight seed our way to the very northern part of New Hampshire. While we were camped in the north, a storm blew through south of us and where we'd camped the night before got 17 inches and Boston got 12 inches!! That was in May!! You may not be out of it for a while Toolman!!

At dawn last Thursday it was 7 below here. This morning it was 37 above and now is in the 40s.

[Silvers]

Toolman, what happened is we have so many drivers nowadays without common sense and especially when driving on snow. And the news/weather commentators get people all hyped up to "cope" with a 6 to 8" snowfall.... make it sound like a DEFCON 4 or a return of the glaciers. Back in the day you had a rear wheel drive car and if the road was bad you pulled over, layed in the snow and put on the chains. Very little salt or cinders on the roads back then and if you didn't have to go somewhere important like work you stayed at home. Nowadays almost all cars are front wheel drive and many own 4WD vehicles. And some think the 4WD lets you to go like hell and stop so very quickly on snow. Overheard at our local supermarket two weeks ago ..... lady # 1 telling lady #2 she has a SUV and her brakes work so much better on snow than with a conventional car. I didn't have the energy to tell her it isn't so. And then there's the salt on the roads that's eating our bridges apart. Highway Department goes way overboard with salt and so folks can go out for random errands on a whim like to to the convenience store because they ran out of smokes or twinkies, etc. No sense planning ahead for a snowstorm, just jump in the vehicle and expect that the highway dept and society will take care of you because you have so many important things to do no matter what weather, and you might get bored at home with a book or even watching TV. We are losing that self reliance that was drilled into many of us when we were younger. 6 to 8" of snow was NOTHING back then and those who ventured out did it for important things like WORK, not to go out to the gym, hair salon, coffee place, hang out at the mall, or other casual things. But then again so many don't work nowadays and have to keep busy and entertained by getting out of the house and on the roads.

Hey good thing Gore is warning us about global warming. Minus 13 Fahr here on Wednesday morning and our power went out at 5am because of a demand overload. Just think how bad it would be if we weren't into global warming. Well Tool now you got me started. Silvers

[ROMAC]

With the day off it is a great day to surf the net looking for gun deals!

[cockerman]

just another skippy day here in the upper midwest

[setterspell]

Silvers quote " No sense planning ahead for a snowstorm, just jump in the vehicle and expect that the highway dept and society will take care of you because you have so many important things to do no matter what weather, and you might get bored at home with a book or even watching TV. We are losing that self reliance that was drilled into many of us when we were younger"
Sir you have nailed it.
I might add theres no "app" for winter driving , well not yet anyway
I never wanted to be that old guy that is constantly moaning about the good ol days but my God this generation of push button Americans

[Stan Hillis]

Lost power here Wednesday morning at about 9 am due to ice. I'm in a part of Georgia that seems to have just that right combination of temps and precip to really get some terrible ice storms. This was the second one this winter, but the worst I can ever remember in my 62 years. I'm a director on the board at my EMC here, so have been privy to a lot of information, that many never hear, for the last 16 or so years. Some interesting data about our relatively small EMC. We have over 3000 miles of line, but only 16,500 accounts (meters). As of this morning 11,000 of those accounts were without power. At the worst of it, yesterday, 13,500 were in the dark. My power was restored this evening at about 6 pm. There will be over 13.5 million dollars in losses to our EMC alone.

I have a little Honda EU2000i generator, and we got by fine through it, but the yard and all the surrounding countryside looks like a war zone. Millions of dollars in pine tree loss. I kept a fire going all both nights and would walk outside every 1 1/2 hrs or so to get wood, and in the eerie quiet could hear 10-14" tree trunks snapping in half all around the area. From a mile or more away it sound like so much rifle fire. Makes you appreciate the easy life we have today. We filled the bathtubs with water so we could dip it into the toilet tanks to keep them operating, and hitting those cold seats in the unheated bathrooms made us "appreciate" the outhouses our parents and grandparents had. Probably small potatoes for ya'll Nawthern boys, but a bit tough on the younger set here who never experienced anything like it. My son left and headed south to a hotel in an unaffected area.

Hope things get back to normal for ya'll up there in the Nor' East soon. I hear you've got another one coming, Quintus, or some such. Since when did they start naming winter storms anyway? Anything to get more TV coverage, eh? Ice melted here today, temps soared back up in the 60s, and the house is all warm again. Life is good.

SRH

[Silvers]

Nice writeup Stan. That's the self reliance I was speaking of .... generator available along with wood for supplemental heat. Also filling the bathtubs with water for the commodes, how many people would even know how to do that nowadays? But then again, as Setterspell wrote there likely isn't a tutorial app to show modern folks how to do things like that. An example that thankfully could have been much worse ..... with the major power outage last week down in Phila, it was reported some 30 people had to be taken to the hospitals because they brought gas grilles into their homes for heat and were overcome with carbon monoxide poisoning. Least of all, how about the the burnt grease smell in the house?
I'd guess that app isn't available yet.

Here in the next county where I grew up, if we get 8" more snow during February we'll break the snowfall record set in 1914. And we have 5" more coming today, started at 6 am. GOOD DEAL, if it wasn't for global warming we'd probably have broken the 100 year record a week ago. Silvers

[bbman3]

Where is Al Gore ????????? Stan,yall had it rougher than us! Did you feel the earthquake last night around 1020? Lordy,Lordy!!!! Frank,wood is the what we heat our home with.We truly have been Blessed! Bobby

[Stan Hillis]

We did indeed feel that earthquake, Bobby. Well, Queen did, but not I. I was sitting here at the computer and she was in bed on her iPad on Facebook and she told me she just felt the bed shake. I kinda blew it off until she said people all over were saying they felt it too.

SRH

[Fin2Feather]

We lost power here today also. We're total electric, so it was starting to get a bit chilly in the house by the time the power company showed up. The guy walked around a bit, checked a few things here and there, and then drove off. Later he came to door and said an electrician was working at a house a ways down the block and "did something he shouldn't have". As far as I know nobody got fried, but the power did come back on.

[fox-admin]

Here in western NY we average 100 inches of snow each winter that's over 8 feet. Today we are at 75 inches and only 8" above normal----so nothing to sweat.
I feel bad for all you good people to our south experiencing extreme winter weather. Your snow and ice will melt in a few days-----we won't see the bare ground for at least another 6 weeks.
Well off to shoot sporting clays this morning it's 9 degrees with 3" of fresh snow.
If anything maybe the extreme weather will make people prepare ----imagine what is going to happen then we have a real country wide disaster some day in the future.

[bbman3]

Craig,I could not hold a shotgun at 9 degrees !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bobby

[Stan Hillis]

As a follow-up to the posts above on a lack of self reliance in America today, there is also a growing scourge of selfishness. It becomes more apparent at times like we just experienced with an extended power outage. Because of my aforementioned duties as a director of my local EMC I decided to go three days and help cook supper at the main offices for the returning linemen. When returning at anywhere from 7:30 to 9:00 pm there was no way they were going to a restaurant to eat before heading to the hotels and bed. We had (have, repairs are not completely over yet) 220 linemen from other EMCs here day before yesterday, so feeding them was a pretty big job. I cooked the biggest pot of grits Tuesday evening I've ever seen, to go with fried fish, catfish stew, etc.

We heard some unpleasant stories about members lack of patience, at best, and selfishness, at the worst. Many people just can't handle living without their creature comforts anymore. There was a tragedy involving a fire in a house trailer. A five year old little girl was killed by smoke inhalation and her mother is in a coma. A neighbor called in, irate, and said "What do I have to do to get my electricity back on, have a fire like the one down the road?". Totally uncaring about the loss of life. Another woman blocked a lineman's truck and demanded he get her power on so she could put on her make-up properly. One man called in and said that if his power was not on by that evening he was going to "blow something up". Another came into the front offices and went ballistic, threatening, cursing. When an employee went out to talk with him face to face he put his hands into his pockets in a threatening manner, and the local law enforcement had to be called in.

I am just sick of the selfishness and lack of self control exhibited by so much of our society today. It spans racial, social and economical boundaries. Sorry if it sounds like a rant, I don't mean it to be negative, I'm really an optimistic person, but this is reality today. What's to become of us? How far we have come from the values and ethics of our founding fathers.

SRH