I don’t know if my readers have been exposed to the media (which is like being exposed to malaria) but the weather has been rather interesting lately. Yeah, sure interesting. Lets call it that. Or maybe these: Exciting. Extreme. Invigorating.
Harrumph! I can’t do it. It’s verbal nonsense trying to sum up this kind of cold snap in a single word. The weather has been more than a minor hindrance. It has been a gold plated pain in my ass.
This isn’t my first rodeo. I know that “cold snap” is not Armageddon. I’ve ridden them out before and will ride them out again. However, at a certain temperature, quantity has it’s own quality. It becomes the most important thing happening right at that moment. For me, the cutoff is somewhere near -30.
When the temperature hits around -30 (Fahrenheit) all forward motion in my life stops. We here at Curmudgeon compound go from “keep on truckin'” to “hunker down and stay wary”. It’s just common sense.
Also, I don’t want to hear any puffed chest bravado from folks who think they’re tough and tell stupid stories that deny simple facts of physics and nature; “In my day we played pond hockey in t-shirts at -80. Millenials should be out there playing lacrosse in a blizzard or they’re just wimps.” WRONG! Even Paul Buynan knew when to sit by the fire and wait. Either you have a faulty memory or you’re a dumbass who barely escaped the clutches of Darwin.
Somewhere around -30 is when the technological accoutrements of civilization begin to fail. I don’t care if you’re a mountain man messing with oil lamps, a homesteader trying to keep the chicken waterer thawed, a suburban commuter jump starting your Honda, or a hipster barista whining because your Amazon delivery is delayed… at some temperature it’s no longer “routine”.
Vehicles stop starting. This is the best barometer. It happens according to a predictable progression of brand names. Starting somewhere with Dodge and Chevy and chewing its way up the reliability ladder until a Honda is dead. If a Honda won’t start you’d better watch your ass! (Note: Mrs. Curmudgeon’s Honda needed a jump start. That means I jumped up and went out there with a battery charger to get it started.)
Once you start whatever machinery you’ve got, you must fret over what you’re doing to it merely by using it in that weather. There’s a heightened risk you’ll break expensive plastic bits off the dash. Why? Because cars have plastics and rubber seals and grommets and shit. If it’s too cold for the material in question, things get tense. Ask the guys from the Space Shuttle Challenger about brittle materials.
All week long, everything (including me!) was near the limits of its design criteria. I could almost feel the power grid groan under the strain. The woodstove and furnace worked 24/7 but the house’s insulation wasn’t up to the task. (My farmhouse is not very modern.) It’s just the nature of the situation: Pipes freeze, trees are “popping” in the forest, obsessively counting livestock is due diligence, and (in my case) my lungs ached every time I was outdoors.
Some folks might not get the whole “everything stops for a while” zeitgeist. Here’s a hint; if you’re checking every water fixture every two hours to make sure the pipes are still thawed you’re not free to focus on the normal tasks of an average day. This isn’t to say other places don’t have their own drama. Nobody’s mowing the lawn the day before a hurricane hits Key West; they’re nailing up plywood and wishing they lived in Kentucky.
I decided to get photos of my outside thermometer as a bit of photojournalism. Sadly I’m still recovering from bronchitis. Every time I ventured a few feet beyond the back door I’d have a coughing fit. Life is like that.
I started taking screenshots of weather reports. This was kinda’ lame but it’s the only idea I had. Then my dog pointed out OPSEC failure I was courting, so I wound up with cropped numbers that mean nothing to nobody. Enjoy:
I got this.
I wonder where the outdoor cat went?
Would a different media source give different results? Nope.
One of the faucets isn’t working! Get on it!
This isn’t funny anymore!
IT IS THE END OF DAYS!
This went on for quite a while. Days sorta’ blended into each other. Eventually it went just below the coldest I’ve ever personally witnessed.
You know how I rip on people who tell bullshit exaggerations? I hate those people:
“This is nothing, I remember once it was -70.”
“You live in Houston.”
“It’s not the cold, it’s the humidity.”
“Fuck off.”
In my never ending desire to counteract fake news, I very carefully remember actual facts. The fact is that once I stood in front of my outside thermometer and it read -40. It was a real honest -40 and not some windchill inflation “feels like” voodoo. It was the genuine article. If I’ve ever been in colder weather I didn’t document it.
Last week there was a morning when it was colder than my previous low. Mrs. Curmudgeon was up and sipping coffee. She was sitting within 10 feet of the fire and wisely planned to stay right there. I tried to take a hot shower and it was tepid. Our hot water heater just couldn’t make the water hot enough. (I hate cold showers!)
After my shower Mrs. Curmudgeon mentioned that it had been -42. The dog had refused to go outside and probably wouldn’t take a dump until March.
-42?!? Wow. I threw on eleven layers of clothes and ventured out to verify it on my physical thermometer. The sun had just risen. It might already be “warming up”! I endured my obligatory coughing fit (bronchitis is a bitch) and then snapped a photo.
Damn! It was already a little warmer. With the first sun’s rays it had “heated up” all the way to about -35. No “new low” photo for me. I didn’t bother to get a screenshot from the media either. I was focused on “real world verification”. I didn’t care about the nearest airport, I cared about my backyard.
Back in the house I complained to Mrs. Curmudgeon. “Darn it,” I groused, “no photo. You know what they say; pics or it didn’t happen. I missed a new personal low. I wish you’d taken a photo.”
“Take a photo?” She growled, “Go fuck yourself!”
Yeah, my bad. I had it coming. Two personal lows in 20 minutes. I’ll be a lot nicer from now on; or at least until it thaws.
Minus temps suck. It was a Feb morning in 2003 not far from Bemidji MN. It was sunny & there was no breeze blowing I went out and marveled at how good it felt (it had been minus for 10 days or so).
Then I saw the thermometer on the shed, it read one degree ABOVE zero (f).
+1 & I though it had warmed up…. I had a problem…
We moved to somewhere that did not have a real winter (by Aug of ’03), ending our 13 year experiment in the upper mid-west (IL-5, MI-2 & the last 6 in MN).
Good luck! & remember that propane stops vaporizing at -40(f)!
We broke some record lows in Cheeseland. I stayed inside three days. Roomie went out. His car died. Tough. He called for rescue. I told him I was too drunk to drive (wasn’t true at that point but I was aiming for such a state) and to take a taxi. I had no issue with him spending the night inside a gas station- stupid should hurt or at least be uncomfortable. He lived.
Hunker down, AC- there’s a rumor of another polar vortex fragment spinning off.
The coldest I’ve ever experienced was a trip to Thule, Greenland courtesy of Uncle Sam. -20 degrees outside at noon and not a single extreme cold weather jacket among the aircrew on the plane. Pre-flight was a stone cold bitch! We were only allowed to be outside for 2 minutes at a time, then come into the plane to warm up for 5 minutes. During the night, all the seals on the landing gear struts had shrunk to the point that the nitrogen all leaked out. That had to be fixed before we could pre-flight and take off. Thule is a beautiful place to visit. But the Air Force can keep it. I’ll take Keflavik, Iceland anytime.
I agree with you that at minus 30 it is time to curtail unnecessary activity. By the way I live on the Copper Basin Alaska now and have had some -40 this winter. In 1989 we were working a dairy farm in Delta Junction Alaska when we had a cold snap which left our themometers pegged at -65 and my bosses house froze up because the #1 fuel oil gelled in the line to his Monitor heater. They were talking about that cold snap in the paper lately because of your polar vortex and mentioned that one town near us had -75 and Fairbanks Airport had to shut down because the barametric pressure was too high for the planes to set the altimiters. By the way propane stops offgassing at -43. Keep warm.
When I used to live in a cold climate (Bradford, PA), everyone up there seemed to be smart enough to generally not use a diesel vehicle unless it was kept in a heated garage when not being used.
Just saying…
And i won’t even bother to comment about how you managed to turn Momma into the Ice Queen with your comment. Not much action there lately, eh?
}:-]
Gets better. If you use any of the bio-diesel it’s basically vegetable oil and will gel nicely in the cold weather. Thing is, there is no Howe’s to un-gel it. Bio takes heat alone to make it flow again. Lots of businesses around here run bio in their trucks, put in a bit of Howe’s and some #1 when it gets cold, and send them out from the warm garage to make deliveries or whatever. Then the cold air chills those tanks, the bio turns to sludge, and the truckers are calling other rescuers to get their delivery trucks back to a warm garage. Real trucks, over-the-road, have heaters in the tanks for just such emergencies.
I grew up with diesel tractors in Iowa. When I settled in South Dakota I decided I wasn’t a farmer, didn’t care about the efficiency, what I cared about was having the thing start. All mine are gasoline, and I’ve not cared a whit if I burn another gallon per hour. In fact, I’m hoping to find a John Deere 4430 or 4440 with a bad motor and an 8-speed powershift transmission. A remanufactured Chevy 292 is a bolt-in and I’ll have 120hp worth of gas-powered loader and snow-blower at my disposal, in a heated cab! With a radio!
If that’s your idea of retiring in luxury you may just be from the snow belt.
Bering Sea in November 1989. Passed by Naval Facility Adak Alaska.
22/23 ft seas. As for how cold? You could spit and it would explode before hitting the deck.
welcome to my world….. ive seen -65 at my house in the last 5 years. dont care where ya are…- 30 is cold and serious business… kids in bikinis at the UAF sign be damned. btw… powder doesnt burn well at those temps… hand wamers arent just for your hands….
Hand warmers for powder? That sounds like a While-e-Coyote setup.
But who am I to comment? I’ve done a similar thing.
I have a Mr. Buddy heater with a hose adapter to a propane BBQ tank. The whole thing was froze. I picked up a 1 pound disposable tank (like people use for camping) at a gas station. I disconnected the BBQ tank hose and used the room temp 1 pound tank to get the ball rolling. It didn’t take long to heat up the tank and hose just enough to get them to like +40 degrees (which still ‘aint warm but propane will definitely flow at 40 degrees). I swapped back to the BBQ tank and the pilot light lit after a few tries. I figured I was pretty clever.
While I was doing this my kid came out to my shop. He looked at what I was doing and just backed out of the shop without a word. Smart kid.
hand warmer in the pocket with your shells… keeps em warm enuff to work at published burn rates. had to do tgat for the frozen finger follies skeet shoot at -40… and i suggest those silicone heat pads like you’d glue to the oil pan of the rig for your propane tank. use only at -30 or colder… stick a small one to the outside of the tank. it’ll keep the tank warm enuff to keep the propane flowing.
The heat up thing was a one time deal. Once I got it flowing I haven’t let the room get that cold again.
yep. you could have been a fuel air explosion speck in the air.
Bits and pieces buddy. Bits and pieces.
Hold my beer and watch this.
(All joking aside, I was damned careful.)
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