It is so cold....

Let'sgoflying! said:
my 4800’msl airport normally has DA of 6-8000’, tonight it’s 2300’
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I always forget to check that when it’s truly cold out. Our DA is -3155 right now. Field elevation is 2110. But it’s 20 degrees warmer than it was yesterday.
 
Our temp at the airport currently shows -33F, fortunately wind is only 3 knots, density altitude is -5,061 versus actual of 1,806. 7 am. Wind chill is forecast for -45 this morning.
 
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The jibes about Texas not being prepared for this are even more deserved... the agency that manages the state’s energy grid posted this last night:

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And starting at 2:30 am, I have been without power 5 times, each lasting between 45-90 minutes. Have gas’s heat, but need electricity to make the HVAC work.

Slight contributor to the hassle is Texas going to wind farms for renewable energy and shuttering NG and Coal generation stations. Reports are many of the wind turbines are not operating because cold temps and freezing precipitation has made them go offline.

Newscasters saying to expect the blackouts to be the routine through Friday.

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We will persevere.... but I think we Texans need to start hiring you frozen northers as experts on how to prepare and deal with such weather.
 
"LTU Alert: Due to the weather, evening classes for Feb. 15th are cancelled. Campus will be closed on Feb. 16th, including day and evening classes."

WOO HOO! First snow day this winter! I get to stay home and play with the snow blower!
 
AggieMike88 said:
We will persevere.... but I think we Texans need to start hiring you frozen northers as experts on how to prepare and deal with such weather.
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It's very much a mentality and lifestyle you acquire over the years. For example, I grew up on a farm outside of town. Sometimes we got snowed in and couldn't get to town for a week or two. It wasn't common, but it could happen without warning between September and June. Same with the power. It's rare to lose electricity thanks to our rural cooperative, but it could happen on a cold day. So we had a woodstove, buckets of water to flush toilets in the event of the well losing power and pressure tank running down, and a pantry full of food and necessary supplies. So, when the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 happened, I didn't worry about it. I had already laid in a year's supply just as a normal winter thing.

This is one reason that most people in the hinterland are in favor of a balanced energy grid and many are deeply distrustful of wind and solar power. We most need reliable electricity at times when wind and solar are least capable of supplying it. When it's -40F, calm, and dark for 18 hours of the day, we would prefer a source of power that can be turned on and off by man rather than by mother nature's whims.

But even if we had a direct connection to a nuclear power plant and a natural gas line directly tapped off a producing well, most of us would still have the best standby generator we could afford, at least one backup heat source, and an evacuation checklist to keep the pipes from freezing while we are hiding someplace warm and the heat at the house is out.
 
welp...KC area is getting rolling blackouts starting today. All part of the same energy pool shared by a number of other states. NG supplies are running low because of the temps, and electric production relies on that gas.
 
Kids and the wife are hiding in beds while I camp in the truck. Warmer in the truck cab in the sunlight than in the house. Power has been completely off in our area since 3:45 this morning. Oncor says indeterminate when we will get power back. It's so cold my propane grill won’t light, so can’t even heat water for hot chocolate or ramen!
 
Well broke my rule of not flying below zero and flew anyway. -22f ambient when I took off. I will tell you from personal experience that little WannFly was very disappointed to come out to do his job before the flight next to the T hangar
 
Craig said:
Kids and the wife are hiding in beds while I camp in the truck. Warmer in the truck cab in the sunlight than in the house. Power has been completely off in our area since 3:45 this morning. Oncor says indeterminate when we will get power back. It's so cold my propane grill won’t light, so can’t even heat water for hot chocolate or ramen!
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This is aggravating many Texans. Not the fact of the outages, it was a record cold that covered most of the state. But the promise that the outages would be rolling 45-60 mins at a time.
We've had no power for 15 hours (well I have a whole-house Generac roaring away outside) but still there are a lot people cold & in the dark right now.
 
Typical Texas... next Monday forecast permits short sleeves...
 
I've been lucky here. No power cuts at all yet at my house. I made the mistake of driving my only non-4 wheel drive vehicle into town today and barely made it up the hill. Half the street lights are off and the only businesses open are HEB and Burger King. The line for BK had 35+ cars in it...

This morning I went out front and shoveled the eight inches of snow off my walkway and sidewalk. I am hoping the UPS and USPS guys will appreciate it if they ever make it up the hill.. Fat chance until Friday!

I also got a lesson in Lead-Acid batteries today. The next ones will be LiFeO4 for sure...
 
AggieMike88 said:
...
It was so cold....​

Bonuses awarded for aviation related and originality....
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No shît, there we were in the alert pit at TIK and we couldn’t taxi due to slush on the runway being reported (no brake performance data) and we had to de-ice to exit to the jet.
 
IK04 said:
I've been lucky here. No power cuts at all yet at my house. I made the mistake of driving my only non-4 wheel drive vehicle into town today and barely made it up the hill. Half the street lights are off and the only businesses open are HEB and Burger King. The line for BK had 35+ cars in it...

This morning I went out front and shoveled the eight inches of snow off my walkway and sidewalk. I am hoping the UPS and USPS guys will appreciate it if they ever make it up the hill.. Fat chance until Friday!

I also got a lesson in Lead-Acid batteries today. The next ones will be LiFeO4 for sure...
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Same here. No power cuts, yet. Shoveled snow for 2 hours to clear 3/4 of the driveway. It's a long driveway and we got about 7". We took the 4x4 out with the little ones to go sledding for 30 minutes just down the road. No problem getting up and down snow packed rural roads. Several fast food joints were open, which I was surprised at.

Sent from my SM-N976U using Tapatalk
 
AggieMike88 said:
Typical Texas... next Monday forecast permits short sleeves...
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We're coming down on Saturday. Glad I picked next week instead of this week.

Only problem is my airplane is at the avionics shop in Kentucky, where they are currently buried in a foot of snow, with more coming wed & Thursday. Plan is to drive down tomorrow and pick her up.... we'll see how that goes. Got the rental car stuck in the road in front of my house this evening. Got it dug out, but that was about 4" ago. Luckily my neighbor is in the parking lot plowing business and agreed to come by in the morning and plow a path to the highway for me.

I'm used to a 3/4 ton 4x4 suburban in this weather...175 miles in a fwd "suv" is going to suck, and now the aviation forecast is getting worse. Guess I'll see what tomorrow brings.
 
AggieMike88 said:
...We will persevere.... but I think we Texans need to start hiring you frozen northers as experts on how to prepare and deal with such weather.
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Well if it's any consolation every single piece of CNG equipment and every nat gas tanker of ours from our Tulsa base is out somewhere in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Missouri. Trying to help maintain pressure on our customer's nat gas distribution pipeline systems. My company has crews working round the clock with minimal sleep now. Our biggest problem is hauling during icy conditions on the highways.

Hoodathunk Texas could run short of energy? btw, the negative oil prices almost a year ago, the lack of investment, the rapid declines in shale production has resulted in a considerable reduction in nat gas supply in the Lower 48.

Up where I am the wind turbines represent 11% of the regions installed generating capacity. Right now, because of the stable, high pressure system holding the cold over us the wind turbines are contributing less than 1% of current supply. Coal (still 31% of our installed capacity) and nat gas are the only reasons the lights and heat are still on.
 
GRG55 said:
Well if it's any consolation every single piece of CNG equipment and every nat gas tanker of ours from our Tulsa base is out somewhere in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Missouri. Trying to help maintain pressure on our customer's nat gas distribution pipeline systems. My company has crews working round the clock with minimal sleep now. Our biggest problem is hauling during icy conditions on the highways.

Hoodathunk Texas could run short of energy? btw, the negative oil prices almost a year ago, the lack of investment, the rapid declines in shale production has resulted in a considerable reduction in nat gas supply in the Lower 48.

Up where I am the wind turbines represent 11% of the regions installed generating capacity. Right now, because of the stable, high pressure system holding the cold over us the wind turbines are contributing less than 1% of current supply. Coal (still 31% of our installed capacity) and nat gas are the only reasons the lights and heat are still on.
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Yup, a lot of nat gas wells dealing with frozen equipment constraining supply as well. It's a shame nuclear energy hasn't been put back into play over the past decade or two as technology has made so many good strides with modern reactors providing a stable baseload. I'm okay with natural gas power replacing coal for the most part, but wind/solar as a major component of power generation is showing its pitfalls. Hopefully we can maintain for another two days until we get a break in the weather and get temps back into the 50s by Saturday.
 
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A friend of mine lives in Falls County, TX and has not had power for at least 2 days now. Fortunately the main part of his house is close to 150 years old and has a big fire place, and he lost two very large pecan trees this summer so wood is close by. The rural electric told him maybe power back on this Wednesday.

But his water is frozen.
 
Going on 32 hours without power. Everyone around us has power.....It flashed back on for less than 10 seconds about 3:30 this morning.
 
It's so cold, it is one of the rare times I don't wish I had an air conditioner.
 
3393RP said:
It's 18° and has started snowing. I'm staying home for the next five days, my fellow Texans are pretty clueless when the roads get slick. What's almost comical is the number of 4WD trucks and SUVs that will be spinning off of the freeways in the morning.
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I had to drive across Texas in the storm on New Years Eve. Truck drivers were all in the median, multiple 2-3 hour delays-road closures in route. Took 19 hours to complete a normal 8.5 hour drive ... :confused:

AggieMike88 said:
The jibes about Texas not being prepared for this are even more deserved... the agency that manages the state’s energy grid posted this last night:
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El Paso is prepared now, because we're not part of ERCOT and their poor planning. We had our power outage back in 2010 and EP electric invested in making sure that equipment would NOT freeze and take itself off line. All of the wind turbines in the Ft Stockton and panhandle area are frozen (they're rated for 13 megawatts, but can only do 1 in bad weather and are turning zero currently - the bad side of depending on solar and wind for emergency power). El Paso owns a big chunk of Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona. There are no nuclear power plants in Texas ...

Let'sgoflying! said:
This is aggravating many Texans. Not the fact of the outages, it was a record cold that covered most of the state. But the promise that the outages would be rolling 45-60 mins at a time.
We've had no power for 15 hours (well I have a whole-house Generac roaring away outside) but still there are a lot people cold & in the dark right now.
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I have family in Austin, they got together at the last house with power, and it's been out for 15 hours (no rolling).

GRG55 said:
Up where I am the wind turbines represent 11% of the regions installed generating capacity. Right now, because of the stable, high pressure system holding the cold over us the wind turbines are contributing less than 1% of current supply. Coal (still 31% of our installed capacity) and nat gas are the only reasons the lights and heat are still on.
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Wind and solar are not reliable in emergency situations ...
 
danhagan said:
Wind and solar are not reliable in emergency situations ...
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They're not reliable most of the rest of the time, either. Around here, the service factor on wind is about 35% max. The rest of the time the wind is too strong or too weak. Even here in windy country. Solar panels don't work well in the winter when the sun is so low in the sky (more atmosphere n the way) and the days are short. And snow covers them. And in the summer, hail smashes them. Blowing dust covers them, too.
 
32 hours now.
We are told the outage is because the energy generating stations froze.

Will be sending a helpful suggestion to electrical gen station engineers/designers to include provisions to have excess power to the thing that is providing power!

Also: JEEZ I'm in the state where all the gas and oil comes from!

Also, also: Last night the town was in blackout and I could see the huge glow of the lights from the oilfields just to the north of us for Godssake!
 
New rumble out of ERCOT is we may not get power back til Friday. Grrrrrrr.....Haven’t had a shower since Saturday, and I’ve got a cold coming on too. To top it off, my one roadable vehicle split the heater core this morning.... 3rd core since Christmas.......OEM one this time.

Thought that was the neighbor’s security light, but it seems to have been a fast freight train.:eek:
 
Craig said:
New rumble out of ERCOT is we may not get power back til Friday. Grrrrrrr
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Heads need to roll on this. Someone in Houston just died from yes, making the bad decision to use their car heater in their garage to keep warm. (yes idiotic move but this wouldn't have happened if not for the power outage - and now we have deaths because of this event, not to mention the millions in expenses and lost revenues)
We learned today that 3 or 4 of the ERCOT board members do not even have a connection to Texas, living in other countries or states...you can bet their heat and lights are on. I am watching a house burn down from a mile away; it is suspected they had a portable propane heater going in their all-electric house. Everyone got out. How can we not have, in TEXAS, adequate grid reserves to accommodate a widespread storm system? AND if some power stations literally froze (too ridiculous for words), why is power still not on late in the 2nd day?
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
making the bad decision to use their car heater in their garage to keep warm
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Just wait, they will probably find families still in their house after trying to keep warm with their charcoal grill. It seems to happen every winter somewhere.
 
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AggieMike88 said:
We will persevere.... but I think we Texans need to start hiring you frozen northers as experts on how to prepare and deal with such weather.
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I'm guessing, but it seems as if the main problem is that the infrastructure (of everything!) was not designed for these low temperatures. You're right that northern cities don't have these problems with similar, and lower, temperatures. I flew into Dallas once, when it was not nearly as cold, but below freezing, with a little snow. The airport (Addison) didn't have plows, and the FBO did not have deice fluid. That was amazing to me, coming from Colorado. But, of course, these items are rarely needed.
 
I will scoff at the next Texan that bags on me for living in Illinois. It's cold but we have power, passable roads, water, etc. Everything is bigger in Texas, including the problems.
 
AggieMike88 said:
We will persevere.... but I think we Texans need to start hiring you frozen northers as experts on how to prepare and deal with such weather.
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It's just the old 80/20 rule biting Texas in the ass. Your systems are set up well to deal with heat, but not extreme cold. Every four or five years northern cities like NYC and Chicago are hit with extreme (to them) heat, temps in the high 90s to 100ish, and guess what? Their electrical grids cannot keep up as well and they experience brown outs as they're just not built to support that much A/C use.

80/20 rule.
 
What happens in 10-10 years when all electric vehicles are the standard? Going days without power at those temps will leave you stranded at a home with no heat. I guess I dont understand how EV's are the salvation, if the grid cannot handle things now (granted in a fluke weather situation), how will it handle the next one with X number more people charging their cars at the same time.
I hope you guys get relief soon. I cant imagine the frozen pipes and freezing damage claims coming.

I have nothing to add, just reading a lot of articles lately on EV's becoming more popular and ICE cars becoming "banned" in some countries.
 
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