It's snowing here. It started with thunderstorms at 6:15 a.m. so I turned off the alarm and went back to sleep. No sense getting up if swim practice is cancelled. When I finally stirred around 9 I could hear the spitty sound of sleet on the roof, then, while making coffee I looked out the dining room windows to see chubby, slow snowflakes cascading down.
It's weird, it's 34° but the snow is sticking to a lot of stuff. Now it's about 12:40 and the snow is still coming down. Probably not a good day to drive around Austin. Texans have enough trouble driving well on dry roads, rain makes the confused and I think a bit of ice would be most debilitating. Just looked out the window again and it's coming down faster than ever.
Glad I'm not catching a flight to some odd assignment somewhere. Seems like a great day to sit by the fireplace, drink more coffee and read a good book.
Wow. Just heard a huge peal of thunder. See you when we dig out.
16 comments:
As always, with Blogger, click on the image to enlarge . . . snow/sleet more visible then.
Having spent 35 years in Minnesota, your "snow storm" made me giggle.
We had The Mother of all snowfall here in Madrid this weekend - the once in a lifetime thing (1.5 feet...). City came to a grinding stop, with people using the metro as a skilift... ;-) Search for photos online, it has been a really strange thing (people jogging in the middle of the highways, dog sleds in the city...)
Get out and make a really tiny snowman!
Where's the snow? That's a nice spring day here in Canada.
Hi Guys, It snowed for nine hours straight today. Very, very unusual for Austin. Our power went out around noon and stayed out till 8:45. I am just now able to post again. The house was getting colder and colder so we layered and drank hot tea. Ben made beef curry for dinner (our stove is natural gas) and we lit everything with LED panels set to a nice, warm tungsten light balance. We were just trying to decide which hotel to check into when I got a text from the city of Austin Energy telling me power was coming on in the next few minutes. Then it did. The heater is now running again and we're nearly back at our usual winter time setting of 68°.
If this is really "Spring Time in Canada" then I'm changing my mind about moving up. Besides, now we're about to have a democrat President (instead of a horrible psychopath-destruction machine), a democrat Congress and we almost, almost have national healthcare (I actually do since I got Medicare at 65) and that makes us closer to Canandian that we've been for quite while.
But don't get complacent. Trump still has about a week left to launch a nuclear attack on our enemies: Like Canada or California. Just saying.
Get a couple of fake gas log fireplace sets. Even if you have to build the fake fireplaces to house them. In Athens, Georgia we frequently have power outages, usually due to pretty ordinary looking rain and wind conditions. With a house completely dependent on electric heat pumps, a few hours without power can make a major difference when it’s in the 20s or below. Gas fireplace logs are meant to be decorative rather than a source of heat, but they can make big difference when all other sources of heat vanish. Just be sure to get the vented, rather than unvented, kind and provide a proper vent to the outside. There may be other forms appropriate to southwest decor - the adobe kiva fireplace for one. See adobelite.com.
I get it that sunny skies and warm temperatures are nice, if a little boring. Must be nice to wear shorts and not have to buy those really expensive parkas from LL Bean, but here in Ottawa we have one advantage you'll never have. For 4-5 months per year, the food garbage in my garage doesn't stink because it's either frozen or nearly so.
Robert, Of course every Texas house is equipped with a Sub-Zero garbage freezer. We compress the garbage into manageable cubes and store it in the garbage freezer until the day the garbage haulers come. Then it goes on a conveyor belt from the Sub-Zero, up over the ever green yard and into a waiting, and geo-tagged trash can. We recently upgraded our system so that the food is not transferred from the Sub-Zero to the curbside garbage can until the GPS prompts from the garbage truck indicate a 10 minute window ahead. After that, and I suppose to keep from having to deal with rotting garbage, our service uses giant lasers to instantly incinerate all the refuse. It's costly but the taxes on the middle class help to defray the costs... It's good to be a Texan.
Props to Louie Gohmert and Theodore Cruz. I hope to see them out in orange vests picking up the garbage alongside the roads that doesn't make it into the cans. A new kind of "public service" for the architects of last week's insurrection.
MM. For the two days (at most, per year) that we ever lose power and heat to the house it's probably cheaper and less hassle to just book a suite at one of the nicer hotels downtown. After making sure, of course, that they still have power intact.
Fires in houses doesn't really sound very safe. For the Summer months we just rely on the Costco Brand, mini-fission reactor we got on sale a few years back. Sure, we have a few three headed squirrels with scorpion tails crop up from time to time, and the St. Augustine grass is unusually bright (even at night), but we've never had to worry about not having the most holy of working appliances - the central air conditioner.
Seems the power infrastructure in many parts of the US is lacking. A little tiny drizzle like that and your power goes out!!
It gets so cold up here in Calgary the local energy company has installed miniature nuclear reactors in all our homes because the metric electrons actually get frozen in the wires. Once things thaw in August we get a huge gush of electrons which if you aren't quick will fry all your circuit breakers. During our 3.5 weeks of summer it gives us time to do annual maintenance on our reactors.
If all else fails we rip up our hardwood floors and have a small fire in the middle of the living room to keep warm and cook our freshly shot moose.
Take care and keep warm!
Eric
Eric, 😉
Oh yeah, that's another thing. We never see scorpions up here in Ottawa, whether au natural or grafted onto squirrels. Well, I did see some scorpions at an exhibit at the Museum of Nature here 2 years ago and that's still freaking me out. I don't know how you live with those things.
Btw, do you even own a snow shovel? I asked the owner of the B&B we stayed with in Victoria, B.C. a few years ago and he looked at me like I was nuts.
What IS a "snow shovel?"
Thunder AND snow! Exciting!!!
We get Thundersnow here in northern Arizona once or twice a winter. Always interesting!
Northern Arizona: not to be confused with the heat and deserts of central and southern Arizona.
DavidB
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