I bundled up and headed outside this morning. It was a "balmy" 12° Fahrenheit and the wind was whipping around but I was determined to get some photographs of our record snow storm and deep freeze. I had two cameras sitting on the dining room table and it took me a few minutes to decide which to take. On one hand there was the Leica SL2 and a 45mm f2.8 Sigma lens. On the other hand there was a Fuji X100V. I decided to put the X100V in full program mode and take it because it's so easy to use as a point-and-shoot camera.
When I stepped out the front door I noticed a pile of snow in front of the office door. The bank was about 3 feet high and I used a broom to brush it all away. I wanted to check and see how my office, the hot water heater and the utility space next to the outside wall with all the pipes running through it had fared overnight.
Before I closed up and came in last night I placed the little radiator heater in the utility space to help keep pipes and stuff warm. A quick check with the digital thermometer said we were nestled right in at about 78° this morning which meant the small space with the good stuff was just right. The studio and office space was about 45°. I won't be working in there today because it would take a lot of energy to heat it and we all need to conserve. There are currently long, rolling blackouts across Texas. The utility space is less than 100 square feet, well insulated and separated from the office by solid core doors. The little heater didn't have to work hard too keep that space from freezing.
I ventured out in the snowscape and was immediately surprised when my hiking boots sunk down a full foot and a half into the snow. It was deeper than I thought it would be!
I know this all sounds a bit silly to people who live north and deal with this for months at a time but it's different for Texans. I think. The cold is like evil magic to us and we don't have the metaphoric strands of garlic to ward off its curses.
I'm glad I took the smaller camera with me because shooting in the cold with gloves on is crazy. All I wanted to do was push the shutter button halfway down, lock in the exposure and focus and then push all the way down. Sounds simple but the bigger your gloves the warmer your hands while the bigger the gloves the less haptic feedback there is on a shutter button. The Fuji works well in fully auto mode and I know the camera quite well by now which makes the whole process less thought intensive. Somehow, when it's too cold my brain seems to go all reptilian and thought processes slow down to a crawl. I tried to concentrate on showing what my neighborhood looked like the day after our record storm but ten minutes out my toes, nose and fingertips started their whiny protests and I called it a day and marched, slid and trudged back to the house.
After 20 minutes in 12° I expected the battery to be diminished but was happy to see all the indicator bars present when I got back to the house. Just before I walked in the front door I remembered about not bringing a highly chilled camera into a warm house (and, with all the power outages I was definitely hoping it was still a warm house!) so I stopped by the car to grab a plastic bag in which to wrap the camera for decompression and condensation protection. If any one is keeping track I took the black one out today, hoping it would absorb heat from the sun....Yeah. Right.
When I got home my fellow home residents informed me that one of the toilets was non-functional. This was something I had been dreading. I used the bucket flushing method to clear out the bowl and then got to the problem discovery part of the adventure. Yep, the toilet sits next to an outside wall and shares a cold water pipe with an outside faucet. Even though the faucet was wrapped and under styrofoam it seemed to have frozen over. It took the rest of the pipe with it...
So I did what any photographer would do and grabbed a monolight from the studio and focused its 150 watt tungsten modeling light on the pipe that extends in from the wall to the toilet intake valve. Then I went back outside and went insane on re-insulating and re-covering the outdoor faucet. Layers of bubble wrap, Polartec, styrofoam, foam insulation, duct tape and mylar all covered with a waterproofed cardboard box filled with construction insulation. Two light stands, wedged against a wall hold the huge melange of insulation firmly in place.
About two hours later I checked to see the progress of the rogue toilet and was enheartened when it flushed normally and then also refilled normally. My family actually gathered around and cheered. It was so great to have a ready and appreciative audience for one of my few plumbing successes...
A few hours later and I'm thrilled to report that it's still functional. And nothing is leaking.
At sunset today it's forecast to be 18°. By midnight the forecast is 10° where it will stay for the next eight hours, with brief flirtations with 8 and 9 degrees. Then we warm up a bit tomorrow afternoon (if we've survived) and the day will cap out at 34 ° just before delighting us with a few more sub-freezing nights. This is just incredibly insane. But there it is. My deepest wish, in the moment, is to not lose power. I'll light a candle to the saints of electrical power generation, just to hedge my bets....
Here's some hasty photos:
A snow covered front yard.
A snow covered car.
ATV tracks.
The VSL compound.
Peering north. Kids sledding down the hill.
Tropical plants facing certain death with quiet courage.
As you may have surmised, it's impossible to drive right now.
And, it seems contraindicated to be outside.
I'll go with the flow and hit the couch with a good book.
Stay safe. Stay warm.
Now, who is supposed to send the St. Bernard with the little cask of brandy?
I'll be waiting by the front door.
14 comments:
Despite what you might hear from other sources, that would be a respectable, if not terrible, snowfall even in places like Minnesota, and your low temps would be noticed even in the north. Fact is, 8-9 degrees is friggin' cold.
For us here in Albany NY, that's just another day, you are correct. And we may get another 10-12 inches or so overnight. But quite the adventure for you! Ordinarily your substantial snowstorms are followed by 52 degrees or something so it's hardly more than a curiosity for a few hours.
Leave any faucets you can trickling water. Moving water takes longer to freeze as the sitting water is instead replaced by relatively warmer water. If you are metered, the cost of the running water could be offsetting the cost of frozen then burst pipes, spewing still more water. Open cabinet doors to allow warmth to circulate in, or at the least to not trap cold in. If you find drafts, plug 'em up with anything convenient. Prop the toilet flapper open with something, just a nudge, so water trickles out and the tank tops-up from time to time, keeping it running.
And yes, from my old days as a former photojournalist struggling with balky digital camera batteries in the deep cold, today's cameras and batteries are far more durable. Sure don't miss the days of deep cold where film leaders shattered as you tried to load a camera. Or film broke apart as you tried to advance frame to frame. Sandpaper on gloves made the right spot more tactile in a pair of gloves. And a hung around your neck shaving brush kept cold was brilliant for brushing snow off lenses.
Good luck, learn where all the shutoffs are for the water just in case. And enjoy the rare fleeting beauty. Walks in the snow can intensify the cardio value per unit of distance immensely too.
Kirk, if you really feel adventurous, your Subaru is really good in the snow. Of course, you'd have to watch out for everyone else...
Impressive - never saw that kind of weather in Ft. Worth back when I lived there. Congratulations on fighting off the winter house demons. And you thought you were through with non-LED lighting systems! Maybe another book? Lighting for winter photography and home care?
Ben must feel that he’s back at Skidmore.
Good to see you out and about if even for a short time.
Merino wool socks help a lot with cold feet. Even when wet they warm and in warmer temps they help cool. There are good reasons Arabs wear woolen robes.
Might check to see if you have some of the air powered hand warmers. The kind in small plastic bags that you open. shake and they warm and keep putting out heat for 4-8 hours. Good on pipes if the power does go out. Also good on hands. You can tape them to the back of your gloves. For cold shooting try mittens that fold back for finger control. Millar mitts with a mitten foldover. Work well and we put the heat pack right on the mitten section for warmer fingers.
Good luck driving - it is the nuts who try to push it that cause so many accidents.
Bundle up a bit more and go out again and let us see how the area looks tomorrow.
Those tropical plants facing certain death may surprise you. As long as they remain covered in snow and the weight of it hasn’t broken the stems they may well survive.
You know the world has gone stark raving mad when TEXAS get's more snow and cold than CANADA.
Stay on top of those freezing pipes - a few years ago, some friends returned home after a trip to Hawaii, where they had dodged a cold snap here. Except that in their (unheated) house, much of the plumbing froze, burst, and then flooded the place when the weather warmed up, shortly before their return. New interior walls and plumbing all around.
Looking at the front pages of the American-Statesman and the Dallas Morning News today requires a suspension of disbelief. Texas is the biggest source of wind-generated electrical power in the country, but that doesn't help much when the wind turbines are frozen.
You have gotten all the advice you need from others so no need for me to repeat it. But congratulations on your plumbing fix. You might have a new career option.
The world is upside down. Here in upstate NY we are predicted to get 4 to 8 in. of snow which because of the warming temp will then turn to freezing rain. I am scheduled to get my first COVID vaccine shot tomorrow morning a half hour away on dry roads. I will give myself a good hour or more depending on weather and take a book in case I am early.
I had to smile at your comment "Just before I walked in the front door I remembered about not bringing a highly chilled camera into a warm house". Back in the early seventies I was on an expedition in the Amazon jungle with my trusty Canon F1 in tow. I was trying to capture shots of wildlife remotely and I had the camera set up so that I did nothing other than trigger it. One morning I crept out of our camp early to capture the dawn light and fired off a roll of shots. I was unable to develop the film until my return to Canada a few weeks later. When I saw those particular images I was wowed because the camera had developed condensation in the lens and created the most interesting filtering effects.
Enthusiastic at my new found "skill" I tried the same thing in all kinds of weather back home taking my warm camera into the freezing weather. The results were never as impressive as my Amazon adventure and the experiments came to an end when I had to face a rather large repair bill.
I'm not trying to advocate that you try the same thing! I think modern digital cameras with all their electronics would fare much worse than my otherwise "indestructible" camera.
Glad to see that you are surviving well. I hate to tell you that here in Toronto we are not experiencing conditions nearly as daunting as yours.
I want to see photos of your wrapped pipes. I'm sure it qualifies as modern art!
I see the “frozen wind turbines” myth has crept into your blog too :(. According to what I read elsewhere the Texas wind turbines produce less in winter but are currently performing above average output.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/texas-power-grid-crumples-under-the-cold/
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