Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Greetings from Duluth where it has been above zero for about four hours out of the last nine days.

 

One of the things I really hate about this cold weather is having a house built on a crawl space. Our faucets have been dripping nonstop since Saturday to - hopefully - keep the pipes from freezing.

 

Last week, Fort McMurray, Alberta was -63C with a windchill of -83C. Those folks are a hardy lot.

 

Massachusetts winters are always dismal, and big nor'easters and ice storms can be dangerous, but we seldom get the kind of terrifying cold you guys are talking about.

 

We’re in central Oklahoma on a water well. We lost our water yesterday and it took me a couple of hours to find the frozen spot. I finally tracked down to a brass manifold that holds the pressure switch/pump control. It’s in the garage, but froze anyway. A space heater fixed the problem. We hit -8 this morning and water is still flowing. I did wake up every 90 minutes through the night to flush toilets and run some water through the washing machine. All other faucets are steadily dripping. If we can get through the night, we’re good.

 

40 degrees and our water is off . . . thanks to a bathroom remodel.

I love the added windchill numbers in weather reports like that.

"Folks, the temperature is -63C, BUT the windchill is -83C, so don't forget to bundle up!''

 

Outing alert: Matt Brown is my oldest daughter.

 

FB this morning:

"Roads in North Alabama are snowy and icy and the government is telling me to stay home or I might die. But this is infringing on my FREEDOM and we need to keep the economy OPEN. I will drive the speed limit on untreated overpasses because I REFUSE to live in fear."

Lots of ice north of us. We may do the sleet and freezing rain this afternoon/evening, or we may dodge the bullet. I went and bought stuff we can eat if the power goes out. Other than that it's just sit tight for us.

 

So I’m working in a local outdoors store and drive a Jeep, so I’m at the store with 6-inches of snow on the roads. How unprepared are Arkansans for snow and negative wind chills? Despite a week of warnings and info from local weathermen, we are still getting about five calls every 30 minutes looking for kids’ gloves and boots. We sold out of all that stuff Saturday.

 

That far north? They're idiots.