It is sooooo freaking cold here. 15 below zero when I went out to get the paper at the mailbox. Darn near froze my whistle.
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.
Looks like its going to stay cold most of the week here. I’ve had no water in the house since last night.
djm
Wow! That is cold.
You need a collapsible whistle. 
With the wind chill factor it was 27 below zero Fahrenheit here this morning. I don’t mind when it’s cold, but when it’s cold and windy, it’s really hard to stay warm!
No kiddin’ 
. The highs have been pretty close to zero or just a bit above for a few days now and I don’t know what the lows have been—probably in the area of -10. Not as cold as you up north, but cold enough. It’s about -2 right now. The wind has died down and that’s helping us out alot. We have one room that has a problem and I was getting worried that some pipes might freeze in the bathroom in that area—we just couldn’t keep it very warm in there. My cats are so restless. One of them goes out for about 1 minute and I sit and wait for her at the door so I don’t accidentally forget she’s gone out. She insists on going out, I’m not making her go out, believe me. She’s a brave one!
That sounds terrible about your water situation, djm. What will happen? If the pipes burst won’t that take some time to fix?
Here in town an unoccupied house, that was being heated, had some pipes burst inside and flood the spaces between the floors and ceilings. Apparently the weight of the water could have caused the house to collapse, so people were very relieved when it didn’t. They haven’t figured out exactly why the pipes froze since we generally have a cold spell like this every winter—it is something people are prepared for mostly.
Oh, knock it off, you guys. We know you love it. I heard from a reputable source (Garrison Keilor) that Minnesotans live just to complain about how cold it is.
And you Canadians would not be anywhere near as cold if you didn’t insist on measuring your weather in Celsius. -15 degrees C sounds so much colder than 5 degrees F.
Cynth, on the other hand, I feel sorry for, because it looks like Iowa is just an innocent bystander getting caught in the overflow from points north.
So far we’ve come out lightly. Only one doorknob got stuck.
The dogs aren’t faring as well. The older one goes out and his feet freeze. I end up having to go pick him up to get him inside.
be careful with that. When I was a kid, our dachsund froze that way, and when my mom picked her up she actually ripped some of the skin off of the dog’s back feet - they were stuck to the ice.
It was -1F here this morning. I really don’t want to know what it was with the wind chill factor.
Cynth is entirely right. Its the wind that makes it worse. Its -15° C now, but with the wnd chill its -26° C. My shack isn’t wind proof. When the wind blows outside, the curtains sway inside. This is what’s doing in the pipes down in the crawlspace. I went out at lunch and bought an electric cable for preventing pipes from freezing. I’ll try and get that installed tonight after work and see how it goes. Meantime, I’ve bought some bottled water to see me through.
If the pipes burst, why, I’ll go skating, of course.
djm
Daughter in Chicago said it was -2F; with windchill, its -21F. A warming trend to 0F was forcast for this week. She didn’t want to hear about being 80F in Southern California
My daughter brought her dogs over the weekend so they could run my backyard. Hers is the size of a postage stamp, mine almost 200 feet wide, so the dogs do like to visit…except this time. They would go out, run around for a couple of minutes and then want back in. 5 minutes warm up time and repeat the process.
The Rotwieler/Beagle mix got smart after a few times, but her Pit Bull kept insisting on going out. A couple of times he would end up just standing in the snow, dancing from 2 feet to the other and my son-in-law had to out, pick him up and bring him back inside.
OTH, you go near a door and Pyscho Kitty heads the other way. She doesn’t want to be in a cold draft of air…
We’ve had close to four feet of snow in the past 48 hours.
Arleen’s stranded in Connecticut visiting her mother. She had intended to come home yesterday, but the lake effect snow was too hard to predict. In fact, it lingered to the north of us and hit here about 12 hours later than expected and she would have been able to get in, but we had no way of knowing. Now the heavy snow band is hammering south of us and barricading the routes between here and the main thruway from the east. Hopefully she’ll be able to get home tomorrow.
Some friends came over and helped shovel for a couple of hours. There were seven of us working, and we got things open enough to get my car in and out. (This is not snowblower friendly work, as much of the snow has been pushed around by plows and is too dense for a blower.) Now I have to figure out how to get the snow off the roofs of seven mobile homes lest any of them collapse.
Best wishes,
Jerry
This stuff boggles my mind. If it reaches single digits on the
Fahrenheit scale here, we cancel school and everyone hides in
their homes with their stockpiled toilet paper and a shotgun.
Psycho kitty
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
Fa-fa fuffa-fa fuffuffuffa-fa
Better
Run run run
Run run run away
djm
I was wondering how you were faring, Jerry. My sister in law has a drive ban in effect right now, and I think that just about everything is closed down. It’s my understanding that the lake effect will keep on going through the week. I hope that you don’t end up with more because of it.
Our temps here are pretty darn cold as well. Last I checked, we were -1F, and the wind chill was -20F or something. Not fun..but it’s at least better than the -22F we were a couple of weeks ago, and that’s without the wind chill. Looks like Old Man Winter has finally made his way here. I want him to go home now 
Jerry…I just saw the report for New York on the Weather Channel and my jaw dropped!
Re the snow on the roof; A few years ago I had to do something similar. I coupled 2 lengths of conduit together and then duct taped a rake to the end. With a bit of a curve in one of the pipes, I could stand on the ground and still reach most of the roof as I was not looking foward to climbing around on the roof. Hope that helps.
My handyman’s here now with his John Deer superduper lawn tractor/snowblower clearing the way from the house to the mobile homes and around them so we can work. Now that he’s done some clearing, I can see the snow’s more like three feet.
Getting the snow off the roofs isn’t technically challenging. We do go on top and push the snow off. It’s just a matter of finding some help and then pushing a fairly mind boggling amount of snow.
Best wishes,
Jerry
Ahh…mobile homes…flat roofs. I was thinking about pitched roofs and sliding off. Nevermind.
Good luck, and stay warm.
Right here it’s around -15F with a high of -8F for the day. It’s been that way for around the past week. I rather enjoy it, it’s refreshing.
Pitched roofs (rooves?) won’t necessarily slough off snow, especially if the moisure content is high enough to make snowballs out of. One year when I was a kid, it wasn’t all that cold, but we had one snowfall heavy enough to destroy trees, and so we went up onto the roof to clear away the snow just to be sure. I had a push broom and the snow would compact itself into these huge white blocks that would fall to the ground with a dull thud. Of course, one of my brothers was inexplicably standing under the eaves below me, and of course I couldn’t resist the urge to land a payload on top of him. Knocked him right over. Man, he was pissed.