Winter 2021

[Jaybifla]

How is everybody holding up in this cold? I hear Texas is really struggling. Rep, you ok?
I hope everyone is safe and warm and healthy.
Georgia is cold.

 

[kgmets]

How is everybody holding up in this cold? I hear Texas is really struggling. Rep, you ok?
I hope everyone is safe and warm and healthy.
Georgia is cold.

Amazing how here in Connecticut it was 52 degrees and in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day the high temp was 38!

 

[Repareur]

It was fn 1 degree this morning. But we have heat and our animals have heat and we are fine. Many people have had power outages. But so far we have been lucky. I took friends to the store today. (Straight boy trick and his girlfriend. They needed necessities “beer and cigarettes”) The stores were open limited hours and were out of bread, milk, and eggs. But there was expensive organic food and sea food that was moved over to the very bare meat coolers. We had already stocked up so I just got a few things and helped them carry the liquor to the car. The store would only let you use hand held baskets and that much beer and wine is heavy. Lol

I did splurge on some very nice gulf shrimp which I served over fresh snow instead of shaved ice. Making the best of the Texas blizzard. No straight boy ass today but it’s definitely on the menu.

 

[BrokeStraightBoys]

I'm in Florida exactly what I moved here lol. My Mom was experiencing -20 plus in her state, no thanks lol. My brother had snow in Texas so anything can happen lol. Hope everyone stays warm.

 

[tampa24]

Exactly Mark. haha That's why I moved to Florida also. I was tired of the bitter cold, shoveling snow, worrying about slipping and falling on patches of ice and so on.

Florida has actually been pretty balmy and slightly above average these past several days. Thursday we'll be close to 80 degrees here in Central Florida, and even warmer in South Florida. My extended family in Ohio is struggling though. Blizzard-like conditions around Columbus yesterday and just starting to taper off Tuesday afternoon. Snow and then freezing rain on top of snow. Just so it gets good and plastered to the ground. (And less likely to melt quickly.) And then the deep snow is hard and crunchy to try to walk though. So you have to really pick up your feet each time to make progress. Then my family farther north in Ohio closer to Michigan have had it rough too. They got 12 more inches added to what they already had before the storm.

But Ohio has not had the power outages that Texas has had. It's pretty awful what they're going through. And unfortunately many of their problems are not just environmental and weather, but man-made problems that have exacerbated their misery.

Please stay safe everyone. It's not over yet by far for many parts of the U.S.

 

[mikeyank]

New York City is having our snowiest winter this year in several years. I bought new boots to get me through slushy corners in the fall of 2019 and didn’t get to use them until late 2020. But while our Texas friends like Rep had an incredibly bad day yesterday, we had a sunny warm day in the low fifties and a lot of the snow has melted. But today is back below freezing, and Thursday morning another storm will roll in with up to six inches of snow. So we are not done yet.

 

[Repareur]

New York City is having our snowiest winter this year in several years. I bought new boots to get me through slushy corners in the fall of 2019 and didn’t get to use them until late 2020. But while our Texas friends like Rep had an incredibly bad day yesterday, we had a sunny warm day in the low fifties and a lot of the snow has melted. But today is back below freezing, and Thursday morning another storm will roll in with up to six inches of snow. So we are not done yet.

It’s not the first time NYC had warmer winter weather than Texas. Back about 82, I brought my first boyfriend, who I was madly in love with for a pre-Christmas shopping trip to New York. We stayed at the Waldorf and had a fabulous time, (visiting such notable sites as the Mine Shaft) I had done well in the Market that year and was trying to be one of the youngest daddies on record. Lol. I have a picture of Robert in front of Gucci in his new full length fur coat weighted down with shopping bags. Anyway we flew back to Dallas and it was 19 degrees. Mid forties if I remember right in New York. We had taken his diesel olds Toronto to the airport and it would not start. We had to take a cab to his apartment and hold up for three days with frozen water pipes and the like until it thawed out enough to get that damn car out of the parking lot. So this situation is not entirely new but it’s so rare The Energy State hasn’t gotten its act together to secure an adequate electric grid.

 

[SFPS01]

Its shorts and t-shirt weather here in Arizona. A bit chilly at night and mornings (high 50's) but warms up considerably when the sun comes up. I am sorry that so many parts of the country are struggling with snow, ice, and cold...

 

[kgmets]

Amazing how here in Connecticut it was 52 degrees and in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day the high temp was 38!

Connecticut goes back to normal tomorrow: 4-8 inches of snow!

 

[tampa24]

So this situation is not entirely new but it’s so rare The Energy State hasn’t gotten its act together to secure an adequate electric grid.

I know this gets a little political but I was really annoyed with the Texas governor trying to lay the blame of Texas's energy problems on the liberals and the supposed Green New Deal that hasn't even happened yet. God forbid anybody in the Texas state government and its utility comanies and energy policy makers take any responsibility at all.

The argument for blaming anybody but those in Texas went something like: Some of the the wind turbines froze and some of the solar power plants shut down because of the extreme cold. Because they supply about 10% of Texas's energy and they didn't tolerate the cold as well, that's apparently the Democrat's fault for pushing cleaner renewable energy. So blame the fact that Texas has no electricity or running water in many cities on the libs.

Uhmm. If these two renewable energy sources only make up 10% of the supply, why has the whole system nearly collapsed? How does the loss of only 10% bring the whole thing crashing down? The governor bragged that Texas also has nuclear power, coal power, natural gas, and plain old fossil fuels for electricity generation. So by that logic Texas should be doing fine and he should just STFU because Texas would naturally be swimming in abundant energy flowing through its power grid right now.

But no. Instead of taking some responsibility and apologizing, taking notes, and planning some energy reforms for the future...he's going on Fox to rail against the Dems for Texas's problems. It's a deep red state with a Republican state government, a Republican governor in charge and only Republican senators in DC. (But of course it's all the fault of the Dems.) If only Texas was a state that had abundant domestic sources of oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear power. (Even if it had no solar or wind power at all.) Oh Wait! That's right. It does. So they should be having no problems at all. Right?

As had been pointed out by the governor's critics there are plenty of northern U.S. states that use wind turbines for power generation. (In the winter.) And Canada in the deep white North too. (In the winter.) And they don't have problems with their wind turbines shutting down in freezing cold. The catch is that wind turbines being used in normally colder states and countries are using technology of different coatings and materials on the wind turbine blades to resist snow and ice buildup, along with heating elements designed into the turbine systems themselves to de-ice the blades and/or prevent them from accruing significant harmful ice in the first place. But what did Texas utilities do? They went for doing it on the cheap. The excuses went along the lines of, Texas has a mild climate. It's not North Dakota, Montana or Canada! So the utilities said we don't need any of that more expensive de-icing technology on our turbines. We'll buy and use only the cheapest a** sh** equipment we can get and just hope for the best. We'll be fine.

Instead of stepping up and working tirelessly and productively to help his fellow citizens get through the worst of this weather safely...the governor decides a great use of his time is to rush on tv and publicly whine like a little bitch about the "Green New Deal". Unreal.

 

[kgmets]

What a horrible weather month of February for most of us! Where I live, it got off to a bad start on February 1st with 15 inches of snow and went downhill from there. And poor Texas! I saw an interview of the Mayor of Arlington between Dallas and Fort Worth, who, when asked how his snow plows were coping with the weather, replied "We don't have any!" There is some hope though: only ten days until March!

 

[Repareur]

What a horrible weather month of February for most of us! Where I live, it got off to a bad start on February 1st with 15 inches of snow and went downhill from there. And poor Texas! I saw an interview of the Mayor of Arlington between Dallas and Fort Worth, who, when asked how his snow plows were coping with the weather, replied "We don't have any!" There is some hope though: only ten days until March!

I was telling Mikeyank the same thing. We don’t have snow plows down here It happens so rarely I’m sure it’s just not cost effective to maintain them. What they do do is sand and salt bridges and occasionally highways. That’s about all they do down here.

While many in the state really suffered including several of our friends we did not loose power or water so we were very fortunate. The other issue is lack of supplies and food in stores. Many groceries and stores like Walmart lost power and all the frozen and refrigerated goods had to be tossed. On top of that people are hoarding supplies. Most stores had no bread, Milk or eggs.

I heard one news report that said no one in Texas has ever seen a winter storm this bad that lasted so long. It’s true it last happened in the late 1800’s. There have been some pretty bad winter storms including one 10 years ago that should have been a wake up call for the utilities because many of the same power problems happened then and studied afterwards told the utilities what to do but almost nothing came of it. Texas is so pro business and lack of regulation that there is no real incentive for these companies to make expensive changes to weatherproof or back up their systems with more capacity.

They deregulated everything and numerous companies can market cheaper energy plans to individuals. We have a great low plan. We had to sign up for three years but it’s got one of the lowest rates around. This type of free market does lead to better prices but it also leads to catastrophic failures like we just experienced. Contrary to popular belief here, government and regulations are not all bad and to quote Ben Franklin they are being penny wise and pound foolish.

 

[kgmets]

I was telling Mikeyank the same thing. We don’t have snow plows down here It happens so rarely I’m sure it’s just not cost effective to maintain them. What they do do is sand and salt bridges and occasionally highways. That’s about all they do down here.

While many in the state really suffered including several of our friends we did not loose power or water so we were very fortunate. The other issue is lack of supplies and food in stores. Many groceries and stores like Walmart lost power and all the frozen and refrigerated goods had to be tossed. On top of that people are hoarding supplies. Most stores had no bread, Milk or eggs.

I heard one news report that said no one in Texas has ever seen a winter storm this bad that lasted so long. It’s true it last happened in the late 1800’s. There have been some pretty bad winter storms including one 10 years ago that should have been a wake up call for the utilities because many of the same power problems happened then and studied afterwards told the utilities what to do but almost nothing came of it. Texas is so pro business and lack of regulation that there is no real incentive for these companies to make expensive changes to weatherproof or back up their systems with more capacity.

They deregulated everything and numerous companies can market cheaper energy plans to individuals. We have a great low plan. We had to sign up for three years but it’s got one of the lowest rates around. This type of free market does lead to better prices but it also leads to catastrophic failures like we just experienced. Contrary to popular belief here, government and regulations are not all bad and to quote Ben Franklin they are being penny wise and pound foolish.

Good analysis. It seems that everyone hates government until they need it!

 

[tampa24]

I was telling Mikeyank the same thing. We don’t have snow plows down here It happens so rarely I’m sure it’s just not cost effective to maintain them. What they do do is sand and salt bridges and occasionally highways. That’s about all they do down here.

While many in the state really suffered including several of our friends we did not loose power or water so we were very fortunate. The other issue is lack of supplies and food in stores. Many groceries and stores like Walmart lost power and all the frozen and refrigerated goods had to be tossed. On top of that people are hoarding supplies. Most stores had no bread, Milk or eggs.

I heard one news report that said no one in Texas has ever seen a winter storm this bad that lasted so long. It’s true it last happened in the late 1800’s. There have been some pretty bad winter storms including one 10 years ago that should have been a wake up call for the utilities because many of the same power problems happened then and studied afterwards told the utilities what to do but almost nothing came of it. Texas is so pro business and lack of regulation that there is no real incentive for these companies to make expensive changes to weatherproof or back up their systems with more capacity.

They deregulated everything and numerous companies can market cheaper energy plans to individuals. We have a great low plan. We had to sign up for three years but it’s got one of the lowest rates around. This type of free market does lead to better prices but it also leads to catastrophic failures like we just experienced. Contrary to popular belief here, government and regulations are not all bad and to quote Ben Franklin they are being penny wise and pound foolish.

Yes. There is plenty of blame to go around between the Texas political class in the state government, inspectors and regulators in Texas (such as they are), the utilities and their leadership...and just the plain cultural arrogance/pride of always wanting Texas to go it alone whenever possible. And that long list doesn't even include Texas' ineffectual national "leadership" in the likes of Rafael Cruz.

You make an excellent point on food supplies that I'm not sure even all Texans understood. Let alone the rest of the country. That being that grocery stores are bare not just from the crush of people trying to re-stock, but that with grocery stores out of electricity they had to throw away every bit of their meat, dairy and refrigerated perishable products. And chances are that their closest local suppliers were in the same situation if they were Texas based. So the large suppliers with huge industrial refrigerators had to toss their inventory too. Grocery stores would/will have to wait for out of state suppliers unaffected by the loss of refrigeration to truck in supplies from far and wide. Assuming of course that suppliers who aren't normally in Texas' food supply chain have the extra surplus inventory to step into the breach. That takes time. And patience.

I do get that Texas culture is that it grudgingly at times considers itself part of the United States, but not really. "It's like a whole other country." "Don't mess with Texas." "The feds need to stay out of our business here." "We're a sovereign state." Etc. After independence from Mexico for almost 10 years Texas was considered a stand alone nation before the Republic of Texas was formally brought into the Union. So I get that there is still that spirit of independence and distrust of the national U.S. government. That said, if you are going to take that independent state pride to the point of saying you want to run your own power grids and utilities, with no say from outsiders...the best revenge in sticking it to those outside meddlers is by getting it right. Preferably by doing it even better than the rest of the country.

This one week has laid bare just how much arrogance, pride and short-sightedness (and probably a dash of incompetence and corruption) got in the way of competently running a modern 21st century state.

 

[Maringuy 57]

Last year at this time I had relocated temporarily to London Canada (between Toronto and Detroit). Very grateful to be living in Guadalajara now and back in the Bay Area. Even here in Guadalajara the temperature has been dipping to freezing in late evening and throughout the night. Very unusual and certainly an indicator of what our Texas friends were enduring a thousand miles to the northeast. I hope you are well and on the road back to normalcy.