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Radio
02-11-2014, 06:28 PM
Well the National Weather Service has announced the ice storm headed for my house in the next 48 hours is to be considered "catastrophic" in nature. The maps show our town in the dreaded purple zone.

I guess that means we'll get a lot of ice. Last time (2 weeks ago) it glazed the roads, only the roads, and left the trees alone. This time everything gets glazed, especially the trees and power lines. Everything will be covered in 1/2" to 3/4" of ice. And that much ice can be very heavy. Snow on the other hand is light and fluffy.

So we went to the store and got a few groceries. I moved the 5th wheel out from under the wild cherry tree. And we stood our windshield wipers up on their ends.

I guess we are ready. :whistle:

Radio
02-11-2014, 06:42 PM
You know, the last time we had one of these, it collapsed the boom on my quad. Bummer.

It has since been reinforced. We'll see. :radio:

NN5I
02-11-2014, 07:19 PM
Wade, does that mean y'all're Yankees now?

Radio
02-11-2014, 07:35 PM
Nope. We are smart enough to know all this is God saying, "Hey ya'll, take a day off."

W9WLS
02-12-2014, 06:35 AM
From My past experience with "WEATHER EVENT'S" in Georgia.
I think it would be a safe bet that there isn't a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk to be had anywhere in the Northern two thirds of the state in any store !

Andy N1ORK
02-12-2014, 06:36 AM
Gotta fill up the plastic gas cans in prep for the snow/ice. Our forecast in Manchester, CT calling for 5-10" of snow with chance of sleet/freezing rain later on Thursday thru Friday AM. Need to shovel out spot for generator behind garage just in case. Our street utilities are under ground so chance of power loss is about 15% in event of a bad ice storm which we are not expecting. But things do change in New England.

N3LYT
02-12-2014, 08:20 AM
Calling for a 1 1/2 feet of snow up here in the south western Mts. of Maine one thing for sure I don't want to go through the "98" ice storm again. Hope you all make out OK down south.

wa8yxm
02-12-2014, 08:56 AM
Outside my window as I type.. I'm in the land of 4 as well by the way.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kt8iz9cuc419brh/20140212_090829.jpg

Radio
02-12-2014, 09:41 AM
OK, the power went out at 0815 which leaves me with a Kindle... until the UPS for the router gives up. Andy mind the shop for a while.

Ya'll pay attention, when this storm is done with us it's going up the east coast.

NN5I
02-12-2014, 10:05 AM
If mine goes out I'll start the generator so I can run the A/C to keep cool on this 82 degree day.

Clermont 10-day forecast (http://www.weather.com/weather/tenday/34711)

Radio
02-12-2014, 04:04 PM
Well, power came back for a few hours, and then off again, and finally back on. For now. More ice is coming and more trees will come down.

Praises be sung for Mr. Buddy style heaters! I have a Chinese knock off of the lil' buddy I got on sale at Home Depot. Runs 8 hours on low on 1 lb. Between that, the gas space heater in the basement and the cast iron steam kettle on the gas stove the house stayed in the tolerable 60+ deg range. It's a balmy 27F outside.

The contractor who built this house 27 years ago was annoyed at me for insisting on a gas stove. :bleh:

Those people who snicker at "preppers" are the ones shivering in the dark wondering what's for dinner. :cold:

And of course we could abandon the house for the camper. Full battery and LP tanks. This should be over in about 24 hours.

Andy N1ORK
02-17-2014, 09:28 AM
Looks like we have a reprieve coming. 52F by Thursday :bounce: May melt some of this white crap. Hopefully, March will come in like a lion and go out like you know what. Looking forward to Spring and opening up my seasonal in NH.
:rv::redtent:
May need to rehang the G5RVjr or put up a random wire.

73!

wa8yxm
02-18-2014, 05:54 AM
That is one thing I like about a home that is wherever I park it.. 5500 watts of ONAN under the dinnette. (provided there is gas in the tank) and enough battery that I can go quite some time and not even know shore power failed less I have A/C on.

And an antenna that comes down every week or two so putting it back up.. NOT a problem (plus I have a spare long wire).

Now the big question: I see this thread started a week ago.. How bad was it, Were all your antennas too small (Any antenna that lasts all winter is too small, or so they told me back in Michigan) or did they come down. I know many I listen to on 75 Meters in the mornings were talking about antennas lying on the snow.

Radio
02-18-2014, 07:38 PM
The roads and trees iced over. I just stayed home as the roads were not passable. My airline job is not mission critical on a per flight basis.

The ice laden trees came down on the power lines and put us in the dark 3 separate short times. Others were out 3 long days. The antennas were all fine. In 2000 it tore up the quad pretty bad but I fixed the boom with a re-reinforcing kit Qubex put out after they realized the original boom would not handle any kind of ice load.

Brought in LP heaters, percolator, battery alarm clock and all that sort of stuff from the camper. Stayed about 65F in the house, recall it was only 27F outside, not that 5F stuff :cold: they get up north. Actually had a bit of fun. Watched no TV. Oh well. Got on the Internet via Kindle and the U-verse WAP which has a UPS.

My daughter camped out at the hospital where she works. They gave her an "atta-girl" reward for quick thinking when tired and under pressure, where her actions greatly improved the odds of survival/quality of care for several cardiac patients. There was no cardiologist available (at times) and her prompting steered the remaining non-cardio type doctors (an anesthesiologist and a general ER guy) towards the best course of action.

She had more going on there than we did here. Here was pretty laid back. We just stayed home, stayed warm and enjoyed the time to ourselves.

Looking forward to the next one.

BTW, it was 75F when I got off work today. :hot: Go figure.

Andy N1ORK
02-19-2014, 07:05 AM
Thank God for good nurses! Had to get an arterial IV put in before they fixed my Aortic aneurysm. The doctor tried 3 times and then called the nurse in who got it right the first time.
You don't have to rub in the warm weather Wade, we only got 7" more yesterday.

Radio
02-19-2014, 02:16 PM
Thank God for good nurses!

She's an EKG tech, among other things. So she gets to see a lot of cardiac issues and proceedures which put her in a good place to recommend course of action.

You don't have to rub in the warm weather Wade, we only got 7" more yesterday.

Wait... they tell me next week it's back to the deep freeze. It's trying to get the peach trees to bloom and then kill the buds. That happens now and then.

wa8yxm
02-20-2014, 06:43 AM
Wade, how bad was it (the power outage).. As an Rver (I assume you are an RVer) you should have a genny to keep the router routing and the modem modeming and the food in the fridge cold and perhaps the house furnace powered.

Me.. When the lights went out in Detroit (And I still had a house there) I have the needed connections to my Onan to do the job.

Andy N1ORK
02-20-2014, 07:14 AM
Wait... they tell me next week it's back to the deep freeze. It's trying to get the peach trees to bloom and then kill the buds. That happens now and then.

OMG!! Not the peaches!!!!!!!!!!:panic:

Yeah, another P***r V****x coming. It's like a bad apple here.:bigcry:

Oh well, It's New England......

Radio
02-20-2014, 07:39 AM
Wade, how bad was it (the power outage).. As an Rver (I assume you are an RVer) you should have a genny to keep the router routing and the modem modeming and the food in the fridge cold and perhaps the house furnace powered.

Me.. When the lights went out in Detroit (And I still had a house there) I have the needed connections to my Onan to do the job.

We have a 5ver and there is no generator. LP tanks full and batteries charged. We could have moved into the 5ver if we needed to. And I'm a little bit on the prepper side.

The power was off and on, out 2 to 6 hours several times at our house. Others had it worse.

We had 3 sources of heat: Gas space heater in basement; gas stove in kitchen, where we kept a kettle of water steaming; Mr. Buddy style portable heater. We could have lit the fireplace, but fireplaces are inefficient.

Food that required refrigeration could have gone outside or into the garage or the camper fridge but it didn't come to that. The WAP/Router/modem is part of AT&T Uverse which has a 12 hour UPS. Radios and LED lanterns ran on batteries.

Sweet Wife does think a generator is a good idea now, though. And a battery powered TV is on the shopping list, too.

Radio
02-20-2014, 04:00 PM
Came home from work, did a few chores. Wound up in a tee shirt and short pants. Opened the doors and windows to the house. Very warm outside, with strong thunderstorms coming late tonight.

Wondering when the next big snow will be here. The ones that clobber us badly are usually in March.

wa8yxm
02-21-2014, 05:53 AM
Gas stove in kitchen not the best choice, I know of cases where a good thigh house used that option and dang near forgot to wake up in the morning (Died from lack of Oxygen).

When Wife and I got our house, It had a gas stove, Wife wanted an electric, I kept the gas stove... Well when her mother died we were cleaning out her mother's house and she tried cooking on the electric her mother had.. She suddenly figured out why I liked GAS better.. once she got used to gas.. WAY better to cook on.

This morning,, The Six O'clock alarm, was provided by NOAA.. Yup, that's when the alert radio alerted, Tornado missed me by.... NOT MUCH, it seems.

NN5I
02-21-2014, 06:18 AM
... I know of cases where a good thigh house used that option ...

This morning,, The Six O'clock alarm, was provided by NOAA.. Yup, that's when the alert radio alerted, Tornado missed me by.... NOT MUCH, it seems.

Trying to figure out that typo. What kind of house?

Tornado missing by not much, now that's truly scary. Hope you got no damage, and glad everyone's OK.

Radio
02-21-2014, 07:04 PM
The promised thunderstorms came. It rained so hard I decided it would be wise to take a dry change of clothes with me to work. It let up a little by the time I got to the airport.

:rain:

I didn't need the clothes after all. The company rain coat is pretty good!