0 Degrees F Now – A Few Additional Notes

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My first  foray into the Frozen South results in several “life in the Outback” notes.

  • Solar panels had to be re=swept – remove overnight frost.  Daily here shortly.
  • Computer 2 is on charge.
  • Big energy bank is 23.8V.
  • Only spot freezing in food storage (mushroom soup cans 31.7F…)
  • No broken water anywhere (waiting for the Big thaw in 3 days, though)
  • Glad to have boxes of Amazon Basics AA and AAA batteries.

News Headlines:

Bitcoin has passed $50,000 for first time ever.  Tulips anyone?

All local phones are down due to no talk voltage from C.O.

I can’t write my name in the snow worth a damn – very poor penmanship – my pen keeps trying to hide…

Zeus the Cat won’t leave the propane heater.

Friday is 27.5F and fridge freezer side is 22.1F

Will move the freezer bins to the “walk out” after breakfast.

Annoyingly, now at the 24-hour, under 10F temp range now.

Exercise

How would your home fare under such an assault?

Meal Planner

Reheated spaghetti on the BBQ side burner for breakfast.

Reheated pork pot roast for Lunch.

Still figuring dinner,  If power is back, bacon-wrapped scallops and tossed salads.  If not, Pizza on the BBQ.

I think the Empire State forecast due out shortly, Dow futures.

With the vulnerability of the US to cold, Biden’s move getting back into the globalist’s climate agenda looks dumber than ever.

Writer when you get rich,

George@Ure.net

46 thoughts on “0 Degrees F Now – A Few Additional Notes”

  1. -26 Celsius this morning, so the arctic temps are finally moving away. Supposed to move up the the freezing mark later this week. Been heating the house for 3 days now with wood stove and electrics. Amazing how much wood we have gone through. The stove needs filling every 3 hours, so not getting a lot of sleep. Furnace repair guy is finally supposed to be here this afternoon.
    I know your pain.

    • Chris, if you ever get the chance, acquire some anthracite (hard) coal. It’ll burn in any woodburner, isn’t oily/sooty, and a lump lasts about as long as seven 12″ hardwood logs…

      • I buy my coal from
        Schultz Coal Sales Inc?
        (307) 672-8989
        191 Seymour St
        Sheridan, WY 82801
        Coal & Coke

        Great people.. easy to work with.. I think I still have two ton’s of it.. comes all bagged up ready to mix with wood pellets… if you have a gravity stove or a multi fuel stove.. in the multi fuel stoves.. coal by itself gets to hot and the circuitry doesn’t work properly.. so you have to cool it down.. by making the burn pot bigger.. took some trial and error.. you can reburn the exhaust fumes.. which really works nice.. no black smoke.. a real nice clean burn.. the clinker is still had as a rock.. we put those in the driveway..
        then of course corn.. depending on what corn prices are.. that is also a cheap alternative… if you have wood chips.. even cheaper.. coal was twenty dollars a ton if you pick it up there.. its the cost of shipping that makes it expensive.. we bought a semi load full of bags between five of us a couple years ago.. If you go there you can get the dust for free.. the same at the power plants.. go up there they don’t burn the smaller pieces or dust.. they only use the bigger chunks.. but then that is the transportation part to..
        that is why I had thought about making a pellet mix and selling them.. the problem I have is the transportation wouldn’t make it feasible for them to be made.. three parts wood sawdust and one part coal dust makes one hot burning pellet.. easy to make.. cheap if your close enough or have the money for the transportation of it..

  2. George,

    I can certainly appreciate your plight. Along about the time of Super Bowl III, power at our residence was out for nearly a month. I remember helping Dad with a newly purchased (before storm) 55 gallon water container. Would load it into the pickup truck and drive 5 miles to town on an unplowed road to get water. No power, no water from our well.

    Fast forward, I don’t have solar cells (yet), but I have two generators capable of running my residence and the farm house. Both are fueled and ready to go. Have plenty of fuel for at least a month of running, if need be. Cupboard is stocked, freezers full. Backhoe and tractor with blade are both plugged in to warmers and ready for snow removal today. Only drawback, the tractor with snow blade is open, no cab. Guess I will wear a balaclava under my motorcycle helmet to keep face and ears warm. Plenty of cold weather clothes for rest of my old self. Farm is on a secondary state highway, but you can’t count of the wonderful government to remove the snow. Best be prepared to do everything yourself.

    So far (knock wood), TVA is managing to keep up with the demand in our area. We are also lucky in that TVA has natural gas fired peaking power plant just 5 miles from my home. I haven’t checked, but I am sure it is running full tilt.

    Wish I were close enough to help remove snow from your road, but the spring thaw will hit before I could drive there. Hopefully the power will come back on soon. Stay safe, stay warm, and wish you and Elaine a speedy recovery.

  3. monday night it was -27 this morning I got up at 0400 and it was -28. The power company sent emails out yesterday worning of possible rolling black outs. my backup generator is propane, and heat backup is wood pellet burner. The electric problems nation wide is a good thing. it will help us rethink the idea of windmills and solar panels at this time. Renewable power is not reliable enough now, compacted fusion reactors would make more sense.

    • Yeah…

      No it won’t. The environazi lobby and their puppets in Congress will spin this into a “need” for more renewables, even more-quickly.

  4. FrozeDude,

    Why YES ! Id like some them thar digical tulips..as would every major bank & corporation in the US.

    -must bee the winter blues heading Ure way – dont let them catch U down!
    U can fight back ..with D3 and sunlight and BTC – however U can get it.

    Texans got a new definition of blue ballz.. and it aint got nuttin to do with ever-elusive lady squirrels.
    Hear to help wit some great-white north survival skills learned many moons ago – on how to catch a polar bear;

    1) cut 6 ft hole in ice

    2) place 1 frozen green pea at the edge of the hole

    3) when polar bear comes to check out pea – Kick him in the icehole!
    hahahahahahahaha

  5. Kinda weird dude. I just got a bunch of Email notifications from old comments.

    You think they fired up Haarp, change the weather patterns down in your neck of the woods? To blast Texas instead of it hitting the Hamptons?

    Just a thought.

    Cowboy up!

  8. In my local paper to day in Letters to the Editor The following item was published with the headline:

    Anthropogenic climate change? The Science – Is it settled?

    It is the most scholarly explanation of CLIMATE I have ever read. I think you will enjoy it.

    The Vostok ice cores captured the last 420,000 years of earth’s climate change. During that time five ice ages occurred, separated by periods of global warming, all without any help from or influence from mankind. There were no coal-powered power plants or jet airplanes or automobiles or global combustion of fossil fuels to account for these climate changes. How can this be?

    Change is the one constant — evolution depends on changing conditions to force changing adaptation. What might be some explanation for this change independent of mankind? Pacific Decadel oscillation, El Nino, El Nina, 200-year solar sunspot minimums, solar output cycles and cosmic ray interaction with the atmosphere, solar radiation level variation due to earth orbital cycle causing variation in cloud cover, 1500-year Dangaard-Oescher cycle, 93,000-year ice age cycle, volcanic venting of gases and dust into the atmosphere and what is yet to be discovered. There are lots of reasons for climate variation with complex interactions and we do not know what we do not yet know.

    But there are significant, historical documented climate changes that have occurred. The Medieval warming that occurred between 900 AD and 1300 AD. The little ice age that occurred between 1300 AD and 1850 AD. These occurred before mankind was in any position to claim credit for the changes or had the hubris to be so foolish.

    However, to his detriment, modern man has acquired the self-ordained hubris to think that this time of his existence is the perfect temperature for the earth to be maintained in perpetuity. This, despite obvious prior ice ages interrupted by periods of global warming when there were tremendous temperature variations that mankind cannot take credit for causing. Perhaps it would be wiser to adapt to climate, not try to take dominion over climate. “Live not by Lies.”

    So there, the WEATHER is NOT our fault! Blame Mother Nature. And as you are showing, Be Prepared!

    • Sir, Jimbo, in Atlanta: thank you for your succinct post. We know this conclusion that Humankind does NOT affect the weather and we are NOT responsible for climate change. And some edumacated idiot will come on here and lie some more. The loonies are running the show and they want money, deprivation of the population, population culling, movement of people to destroy all once majority White nations, and by folly or by golly they are going to get it done, over your dead body or others. Period. Now pollution, a real problem, they do not want to spend trillions applyinng science and technology solving pollution issues as they CREATE the pollution problems and claim them only solvable by reducing humankind footprint. We are living in times to weary the soul. Resist.

      • “We know this conclusion that Humankind does NOT affect the weather and we are NOT responsible for climate change.”

        ??????…to think 8 billion furnaces and their actions has no influence.. that doesnt hold up either. Global climate change is a cyclical event.. but the actions and presence of 8 billion furnaces does hasten the natural event, even though they do not cause it..
        That’s th he big debate.. how much does the actions of the global population have on hastening the regular cycle

    • Jim Stone wrote:
      http://82.221.129.208/.us9.html

      POWER SHUT DOWN IN TEXAS NOT CAUSED BY WEATHER
      I said this early on – the whole story about frozen filters on gas lines was a hoax. Now it has been discovered that NONE of the wind turbines needed to be shut down, and that in fact conditions were far more favorable than normal for using them to generate power. Yet 30 gigawatts was suddenly switched off and there appears to be no reason for it. ERCOT is scrambling for answers. They can’t explain what happened. Even coal and nuclear went down. So what on earth happened? STUXNET? or was this a big political game?

  9. In my local paper today in Letters to the Editor The following item was published with the headline:

    Anthropogenic climate change? The Science – Is it settled?

    It is the most scholarly explanation of CLIMATE I have ever read. I think you will enjoy it.

    The Vostok ice cores captured the last 420,000 years of earth’s climate change. During that time five ice ages occurred, separated by periods of global warming, all without any help from or influence from mankind. There were no coal-powered power plants or jet airplanes or automobiles or global combustion of fossil fuels to account for these climate changes. How can this be?

    Change is the one constant — evolution depends on changing conditions to force changing adaptation. What might be some explanation for this change independent of mankind? Pacific Decadel oscillation, El Nino, El Nina, 200-year solar sunspot minimums, solar output cycles and cosmic ray interaction with the atmosphere, solar radiation level variation due to earth orbital cycle causing variation in cloud cover, 1500-year Dangaard-Oescher cycle, 93,000-year ice age cycle, volcanic venting of gases and dust into the atmosphere and what is yet to be discovered. There are lots of reasons for climate variation with complex interactions and we do not know what we do not yet know.

    But there are significant, historical documented climate changes that have occurred. The Medieval warming that occurred between 900 AD and 1300 AD. The little ice age that occurred between 1300 AD and 1850 AD. These occurred before mankind was in any position to claim credit for the changes or had the hubris to be so foolish.

    However, to his detriment, modern man has acquired the self-ordained hubris to think that this time of his existence is the perfect temperature for the earth to be maintained in perpetuity. This, despite obvious prior ice ages interrupted by periods of global warming when there were tremendous temperature variations that mankind cannot take credit for causing. Perhaps it would be wiser to adapt to climate, not try to take dominion over climate. “Live not by Lies.”

    So there, the WEATHER is NOT our fault! Blame Mother Nature. And as you are showing, Be Prepared!

  10. I live in an old trailer house with a pressure tank under it for my well and minus 10 F and the elec went off 7:30 AM. Put another log on the fire but that doesn,t keep the heat tape hot on the water lines or the water pump running, have to leave a valve cracked open when below zero F . Battery dead on my Honda ES 6500 gen, thank God the outage is only for my area of town, my neighbor runs the local battery store, so off to the store $50 and 1 hr later and I am back in power and water is flowing. This summer I am putting a natural gas carb kit in it. A tank of gas only last a couple of hours got 10 gal in the garage, stabil of course
    Hope your efforts to keep warm and well are as successful or better than mine this power outage

  11. The world situation would be laughable if it wasn’t so damn dangerous. How we take our comfort, safety, and liberty for granted. Folks better wake up to the fact that the government is not coming to save you! Please let this be a wake up call to many to understand we need to live simple, honest, and productive lives while caring for each other. Self reliance wasn’t just a virture….it kept our forefather and mothers ALIVE.

  12. I feel your pain George. -15 here this morning but at least we have power. I spent Saturday morning thawing out my septic drain pipe. I was using a propane torch that doesn’t work very well in the cold temps. When I got that thawed out I started my tractor to plow my 1/4 mile drive and the fuel was starting to gel. I had some stabilizer in it but not enough I guess. I did have some 911 on hand and that did the trick. Fun times!

    I live in southern Iowa so we do get this cold from time to time. My oldest boy lives down in your neck of the woods Northeast of Denton. Him and his wife are on a short vacation down in the Caribbean so I told him he better have someone stop by his house and check for a frozen pipe. Most houses down there are just not built for those extreme temperatures.

    Good luck and keep us posted.

  13. At 1115 it is 34 degrees and falling; it was 43 degrees at 0630 when getting ready to go to Clarksburg VAMC. Here in the mountains on the western plateau of Allegheny Mountain, we are used to these temperatures. With a wood burner, emergency lights, and plenty of food/water; we are always prepared especially after the last area-wide power outage. Going to get a generator for general lighting and puters. Getting seed ordering finished, blocks ordered for new raised bed 4×16, and reading some new permaculture articles Hear it is terrible down your way…stay by the fire.

    • I make crisco candles for the cars..wick through the top of the lid then a lid over that to seal it till you need it..
      Then I have siege stove parts to put it in..
      https://siegestoves.com/wood-gas_can_stove.htm
      I gave those away with xmas cards a few years ago.. super nice . Great woodgas stove.. still got a few of them left..

  15. My son and his family live a few minutes south of Austin..he called yesterday saying he had no running water (frozen pipes) no heat , no electricity..it was 9 degrees there . You don’t think of So Texas having to worry about such things but in this storm, even Brownsville! Of course no better here in SW Ohio…been snowed in a week so far and looks like it will be one more. The car I drive is rear wheel drive with poor weight distribution for this weather..soooo..I’ll feed the birds and bake cakes..:)

  16. Thank goodness for Global Warming … or Texas might have gotten REALLY COLD from this weather event!! All of you in Texas/Oklahoma/Arkansas should thank Al Gore for that lesson in climatology!!

    AOC and the “woke” crowd who desire to eliminate fossil fuels should go live a winter in Duluth MN, or across the river in Superior WI, and put their dreams to a real world test. Let her and them use NO fossil fuel for their entire winter there!! NO natural gas, NO coal, and no electricity generated by those means either!! OH … and NO gasoline or diesel /natural gas powered vehicles either … including city buses!!

      • Wood Stoves:

        My older son put one in his very small place and it put out so much heat it nearly drove him out when he would fire it up. He wanted to burn wood from his and his neighbors yards – of which there is always plenty around but it seemed like a lot of work to me.

        ME? I like his resourcefulness but don’t want to be up every 3-5 hours feeding a wood stove that is there for backup heat. If it was me I would have gone with a pellet stove that self fed and could run without electricity (yep they do make such things). Fill the hopper and not have to worry about it for a couple of days … and one can store enough pellets in the shed to last an entire winter’s heating season.

        Sure I would have to pay for the pellets versus getting the wood for free … but at my age some conveniences are imo worth paying for!!

        The EASIEST no electricity solution, though one still requiring society to overall still be functioning, would be a wall mounted natural gas /propane room heater (I prefer vented vs. unvented) that doesn’t need a blower, but can use one if one wants. They also make similar items that are kerosene powered, remember those from my childhood and people having those 250 gallon tanks on stilts outside next to the house out in the country (usually a farm hand’s house).

        Electricity is good … but for almost everything we do with it there are other options for accomplishing the same task (except for the ability to use computers and the internet). Just note the Amish.

      • “My older son put one in his very small place and it put out so much heat it nearly drove him out ”

        Stephen.. my father heated with wood most of my life.. lol lol he would cut three trees a week .plant three trees a week..anyway his goal was to have ef enough wood so that after he died mom would have enough to last until she was gone.. what he didn’t calculate was that they got colder as they aged..lol lol anyway us kids would come around for holidays and it was so hot in the house that after a while your sweater came off then one day dad said it’s time to throw another log on the fire…my brother instantly made the comment. I wonder how long it will take until we are all in our underwear.. dad said go ahead and laugh..one day your gonna get old and on blood thinners to.. lol lol lol lol
        Cook you right out of the house..that’s also why my wife wont let me put a multi fuel pellet backup on the furnace lol lol..

  18. I suddenly am happy I live in the Hurricane belt in south florida, Those temps would crush a southern boy like me…….be wll G….and take good care of E

  19. “I can’t write my name in the snow worth a damn – very poor penmanship – my pen keeps trying to hide…”

    Hahahaaa!!! Politely put, G. Nice! S. IN in my area didn’t get as much snow as forecasted. However, we do have two more days to go, so warnings are still valid. When I checked the accuweather’s monthly weather forcast, it shows us being back to 40-60 degree range the following two weeks! Damn! Indiana: Land of Schizoweather.

    • “my pen keeps trying to hide…”

      Better your pen silvermitt than an appendage just suck into your body like a turtle’s head trying to keep warm…lol

  20. “I can’t write my name in the snow worth a damn – very poor penmanship – my pen keeps trying to hide…”

    LOL! LOL! Cold Shrinkage? Don’t eat the yellow snow!

  25. Water and electricity stayed on all night; all comms went dead. About mid-morning my phone proclaimed I can make emergency calls (only). The symptoms are for an upper tier comm failure affecting both ISP’s & cell service. Note that a neighbor with Verizon still had service. You gets what you pay for I suppose.
    I went into work at noon. The roads aren’t that bad today. The office has all the amenities functioning. I got a feeling some of the coworkers without heat at home will be camping here tonight. Turn the water off at the house, and bed down in the cube. Hmmm… I wonder if it would raise eyebrows if a Lazy Boy appeared in the cube.

  26. This cold in unexpected areas is devastating to livestock. Many of them will not have the winter coats to survive this. We could pretty much predict the severity and timing of the coming winter by evaluating the winter coats on the horses. In Nebraska, when the temp dropped to zero, cattle required about twice the amount of hay. That is the time when we started feeding alfalfa from the stackyard. Feed too much alfalfa and it thinned the blood resulting in hemorrhaging when birthing calves. The hay not only provided food, it was also bedding for the cattle to lie on to sleep. Very, very important.

    We also had to check the water supply twice a day. Chop the ice in the windmill cattle tanks, then use a pitchfork to remove the ice chunks. In a hard winter that pile could be over 10 feet high by spring. In desperate times, cattle will eat snow, but they don’t thrive under those conditions. Undersize and stillborn calves were the result.

    This is also going to affect food production. Research shows that food prices are predicted to rise by 30% in the USA in 2021. This crop damage will pretty much guarantee that. If you can actually find food. Because much of the diet of Americans is crap anyway. That’s the cause of much obesity, trying to eat enough food to get the necessary nutrients to maintain the immune system. But the corporation spend millions to make it taste good.

    I find it interesting how Americans baby their taste buds with things like pizza and bbq and the “tasty” food advertised in survival food packs. I met a woman from Cuba that said as a child, her family survived on a diet of lentils for almost a year, with a bit of meat once a week. There are hellacious stories coming out of Venezuela too. Early on the animals in the zoos and even the pets disappeared into the cooking pots. Keep in mind that Venezuela went from the wealthiest country in SA to eating pets in less than 2 years. There were lots of Venezuelans who would have loved a pot of lentils. Average weight loss of Venezuelans was 27 lbs.

    In Haiti, after the quake, Haitians were mixing clay into their food to achieve a feeling of fullness.

  27. Hi George,
    It won’t help you this time around, but it’s worth looking into this solar/geothermal greenhouse operation in Nebraska. This guy has been growing citrus fruits for 20 years there. It is mostly based on burying a set of U-shaped airpipes below the frost line, where it stays 54 deg F year-round. He has a small blower fan on one end of the U that brings 54 F air into the greenhouse throughout the winter–So no heater needed, just a blower fan.
    If you have a sun porch (and a good backhoe!) you could do the same thing in Texas. Put in the U-tube, blow air in one end, and 54 deg air comes out the other end–Livable in Winter, and a real bonus in the Summer. Here’s a link:

    https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/

    https://greenhouseinthesnow.com/

    • thanks for the heads up about proven ‘free’ warmth and cooling right below our feet….hope this dude’s science and practical farming methods really take off, it’s time for agriculture to improve!!

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