h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sleeting again.

Try this link, Gosho
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=284816&id=773727206&l=bfa7c68243

At the moment, it looks like 17/-8.3 was our lowest temperature last night but I'll get a more definitive reading when the six-hourly number gets posted. I put my oven probe thermometer outside to get a reading but it's too cold for it - it just says "Lo"

And I've just heard on the local news that we're likely to get rolling power cuts of around 30 minutes during the day because the state electricity company can't keep up with demand And it's going to be even colder tonight.

It's too cold for a reading in the beer store too but at least the beer isn't frozen We're unlikely to make it above freezing until Friday daytime, and the forecast low temps for Wednesday and Thursday nights are 16 and 22, but I think I'll take a chance on leaving it out there. It's in a cardboard box, which is in a shed, if you can call that thing a shed. It's just part of the balcony that's been partitioned off and a door put in. One wall is an outside wall, one is an inside wall and another backs on to next door so it's effectively a big cold frame.

Bringing the beer in now will be like taking it out of cold store, bringing it up to room temperature (cos there isn't enough room in my fridge for that many bottles) and then chilling it again. Doing that too many times isn't good for beer.

Y'know, since my balcony doesn't stick out at all, and therefore the railings are flush with the wall of the building, I could probably find some way of sealing it off, even if it's something as permeable as a bamboo blind. That air space between the balcony door and the outside world would provide some heat insulation, and insulation is something these apartments have 0 of. They were built when energy in Texas was cheap and supposedly limitless. And they were built to be cheap

We're expecting similar here. It was 23°F/-5C here this morning. For the gulf coast, that's officially er than a 's .

How convenient that we have exactly the right smileys for that saying Do you think we should talk to Alex Jones about that 'coincidence'?

This threat of power cuts has seriously put the kibosh on my plans for the day. I was going to do a load of baking and I have to do laundry too. What if the power goes off while I'm the middle of baking a cake or if my smalls are in the middle of the wash cycle?

That is one thing I do like about having a gas oven. Not that I ever use it, mind you.

I really miss being able to cook with gas, especially gas rings, but they won't have any gas appliances in an apartment complex because of the probability of some pillock blowing one of the buildings into the middle of next week, and the lawsuits that would no doubt follow

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/sohemi/sohemiloops/shirgmscol.html TC Yasi the size of New Zealand, with an eye 35kms in diameter (taking an hour to pass just in itself). Category 5 - winds of 300kph at the eye wall. Thousands of roofs off. Power off to around 180,000 homes so far. And it's not over yet.

When Mother Nature sets her sites on you there ain't much you can do about it except keep your head down and hope for the best. CZ did a pretty good job of preparing for Ike, if I remember rightly, and luckily he didn't have to deal with flooding or structural damage.

In the meantime, I've got a fitted bed sheet pinned up over and covering the front door to keep the drafts out, and a flat sheet pinned up over the patio doors. Seriously, this place was not built with weather in mind. Light comes in around the front door. You can't actually see through the gap, but it's not a good seal. I don't think there's any insulation at all in the loftspace or in the walls, and the windows might as well not be there as far as heat or sound insulation is concerned.

When I was a kid we did the same sort of thing - there was a heavy curtain on the inside of the front door at our home and the homes of most of my friends too, and home made draught excluders kept cold air from coming in underneath internal doors because there was usually heating only in the living room. We also had some storage heaters in the hall and the kitchen, but nothing upstairs.

When central heating started to become more common I could never understand the logic of putting a radiator underneath a window because most people had curtains that covered most or all of the radiator when they were drawn at night, or they stopped just above the radiator so that any heat coming off the top of the radiator went behind the curtain and was radiated out through the glass, which is a very fine conductor of heat and perfect for the job.

So I've eliminated as many sources of drafts as I can for tonight. Still got two windows where heat can escape and cold air come in, but I don't have any more sheets to cover them up with, and to be honest I'm not at my best in the morning and the prospect of having to take down sheets from every window and make breakfast before I go to work doesn't fill me with

And the local National Weather Service reporting station for Austin http://www.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KATT.html has fallen over. Nothing since 15.51 today, and a gap earlier in the day. Autin Bergstrom http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/obhistory/KAUS.html is working better but they're pretty much outside the urban area and get several degrees F colder than we do here in town.

Gosho, have you checked the hinges on the doors? We had a gap we could see through in our front door but tightening the hinges did the trick. You can also get relatively inexpensive sticky-back weather stripping that you could put around the door frame.

Since my mobile has settled since it's been installed, we have a few windows that no longer seal. (Yes, I know we should have the house re-levelled, but there's currently no budget for it). We've used the weather stripping on the windows in the past, and we have some rolled up towels in the window sills.

Did you get any snow, or just cold? We're supposed to get down to -5 tonight. Be a test for our water line, which freezes every winter (but hasn't yet this year <fingers-crossed-smiley&gt

We're supposed to get snow Thursday night/Friday morning - maybe an inch or two.

Yeah, I keep meaning to get some of that weather strip but... well, I'm not founder of the h2g2 Procrastinators Club for nothing y'know The hinges are fine, and if anything that would make it worse, because the gap is on the side of the door where the lock is.

ACH!... More synchronicity (see my journal). That's the third time this week I've heard talk about door hinges. The other day someone was talking about door hinges, I think it was my parents, and they were having trouble with the term for that bolt-like piece that connects the hinge. A couple of days later (Monday) I get back to work and tear a few pages off my page/day trivia calendar and I learn that the term for it is "pintle".

Spooky

Jargon throws up some fascinating words. Pintle, gudgeon pin, cotter pin to name a few. And podger.

When I worked as a stagehand we often had to line up two holes in separate pieces of the set so that we could put a bolt through them and fix them together. We had a tool for the job It was a piece of metal about half an inch diameter and a foot long, tapered at one end and with a hook at the other. You put the tapered end in the hole in one piece of the set, wiggle it through the hole in the second piece so the holes line up, then three people hold the two pieces of the set tight together while another pulls out the podger and bolts the two together

Ur welcum.

Here's some more synchronicity, hot off the... stove.

This isn't exactly germaine, but close. You were talking about not being able to bake earlier if the power goes out. If you were just frying instead, I point you to the Hobo Stove.

http://thereifixedit.failblog.org/2011/01/31/white-trash-repairs-hobo-stove-in-action/

And they were cooking bacon

With beer cans!

...


Well, It wasn't quite as cold this morning as it was yesterday with temps just right below the freezing mark. But it's supposed to get worse today. Here's the warning I just got at work:

------------------
The National Weather Service in Houston/Galveston has issued a Winter Storm Watch for JSC and Ellington Field beginning at noon Thursday (02/03/11) valid through noon Friday (02/04/11).

Very light freezing rain...sleet...and snow is expected to begin at JSC by mid Thursday afternoon. Later in the evening and into the overnight hours heavier precipitation may fall at times. Snow may become the predominant weather by late Thursday night / early Friday morning. Freezing rain is more likely in southern Galveston county. Mostly snow is expected further to the north and west. The wintry mix is forecast to taper off by mid morning on Friday.

A trace to around 0.10 inch of ice may accumulate around JSC and Ellington from this winter storm. In addition snow amounts are expected to average from 1 to 3 inches in the JSC area. Roads may become very slick especially by Thursday evening. Be sure to cover any delicant plants not already protected from the cold.

Temperatures will struggle to rise into the mid 30s on Thursday and Friday. A hard freeze will continue until mid morning Saturday when temperatures will rise into the 40s. A high near 60 is possible on Sunday.

Another update will be issued Thursday morning before 8AM.
-----------------

I know that might not seem serious to folks buried under feet of snow, but this is an area that's just not prepared for "winter". We had rolling blackouts throughout the area yesterday. I haven't heard exactly why a cold snap would cause this when we can handle brutally hot summer weather without blackouts. The only explanation that has even sounded reasonable is that some power plants had broken water pipes. I live about a mile from a power plant that was shut down about a decade ago. My theory is that it was done for pure profit motives. They make more money by running right at the edge. In Texas, the power rate prices are constantly changing via a sort of permanent live auction based on usage and demand. At peak demand the temporary rates jump up. They've closed plants while demand increases... How's that "free market" system workin' out for ya?

Pre-cicesly

I heard just a few minutes ago on the radio that several power plants "failed" yesterday at the same time that we got this cold weather and everyone was switching on their heater, but they didn't go into any more detail than that. Burst pipes would make sense, given the temperatures.

It looks we might have been a little warmer last night than Tuesday night, not that 19/-7.2 over 17/-8.3 is much of an improvement. Here's the thing that sends me loopy though. The highest temperature yesterday was 23/-5. Today it's forecast to be a little warmer at 25, then 22 tonight with snow.

By Sunday it's going to be 65/18.3

Did you expect winter to last all season long?