Art

[sid]

Merc has the right idea. We had a Generac generator in our house and it ran on natural gas. It was serviced once a year by a Generac certified electrician. Whenever we had an outage it would go on automatically and then shut itself off after power was restored. Even in the summer when we had many lights on and our central air-conditioning going full blast.

[Art]

Ok guys, time for an after action report.

This was not as bad as the catastrophic freeze of 1983 when it didn't get above freezing for four straight days in Houston and was below freezing at night for 11.

we lost power for 22 hours yesterday, no big gig especially since we have a generator and know enough to drip our lines to keep our pipes from fracturing. There has been a loss in water pressure so there is a boil order in effect. It doesn't affect us much because we have a water reserve. Years ago before a hurricane our son-in-law gave us a 5 gallon contractor Igloo cooler, you know, the ones you see on trucks for work crews. We filled it before this mess and are using it for coffee and stuff.

Because we were prepared we had no physical damage to our property, lost no food from the reefer or freezer and basically suffered mild inconvenience. Our daughter had a fractured pipe but the damage isn't too great. Our son lives in an apt. in San Antonio and lost all of his food.

It was in reality not as bad as a hurricane overall but people here don't deal with cold well, individually or collectively and there have been deaths in the area, mostly in Galveston County. The biggest damage is broken water pipes in houses and small businesses.

Thank you all for your concern.

[S.A. Boggs]

Ok guys, time for an after action report.

This was not as bad as the catastrophic freeze of 1983 when it didn't get above freezing for four straight days in Houston and was below freezing at night for 11.

we lost power for 22 hours yesterday, no big gig especially since we have a generator and know enough to drip our lines to keep our pipes from fracturing. There has been a loss in water pressure so there is a boil order in effect. It doesn't affect us much because we have a water reserve. Years ago before a hurricane our son-in-law gave us a 5 gallon contractor Igloo cooler, you know, the ones you see on trucks for work crews. We filled it before this mess and are using it for coffee and stuff.

Because we were prepared we had no physical damage to our property, lost no food from the reefer or freezer and basically suffered mild inconvenience. Our daughter had a fractured pipe but the damage isn't too great. Our son lives in an apt. in San Antonio and lost all of his food.

It was in reality not as bad as a hurricane overall but people here don't deal with cold well, individually or collectively and there have been deaths in the area, mostly in Galveston County. The biggest damage is broken water pipes in houses and small businesses.

Thank you all for your concern.

Glad to hear you and yours are O.K.
Sam

[Vern Humphrey]

I'm home alone right now -- and can't get up the mountain even with 4-wheel drive. I've got plenty to eat, and the electricity and water are still on. If they go off, I've got a 48 KW propane generator, and both bathtubs filled with water.

[Merc]

We drove across Rt 40 in TX on our way from Pittsburgh to Phoenix, AZ in the spring of 2017 and we must have seen several hundred wind turbine generators on both sides of the highway. It seemed like an ideal place for these generators because the wind was very powerful and never seemed to quit. We saw several tractor-trailers that were laying on their sides on the highway from being blown over by powerful gusts of wind. The recent ice storms in TX have demonstrated how unreliable wind turbines can be under certain circumstances. They only produce power if they are being driven by the wind and will draw power and run like motors if there is no wind unless they are automatically disconnected. It’s foolish to see politicians believe that wind turbines are the going to be our future primary source of reliable power.

[Vern Humphrey]

In addition to which, wind turbines kill thousands of birds, including Bald Eagles.

[oscars]

US Fish and Wildlife estimates that wind blades kill 140-500, 000 birds per year. However, free ranging domestic cats kill 4-6 billion birds and 18 billion small animals per year.

[Art]

US Fish and Wildlife estimates that wind blades kill 140-500, 000 birds per year. However, free ranging domestic cats kill 4-6 billion birds and 18 billion small animals per year.

The number of birds killed by feral cats is a SWAG proven by the extreme range in the numbers. I don't dispute the number is extremely high but anyone who estimates how high is doing just that....estimating. On the other hand, you can walk under wind turbines and count the casualties.

That 140,000 to 500,000 birds per annum is on top of what domestic cats kill, not in place of. Wind Turbines are especially hard on raptors which led the government to give them a special dispensation when it came to killing hawks, vultures, owls and especially eagles. The number of dead birds will go up as wind turbine numbers increase. Personally I think off shore is the best place for them but this is an area in which I don't have a vote.

The majority of the small mammals killed by cats are pest rodents, rats and mice. They do nail the occasional rabbit or squirrel. The reason we originally domesticated them is their pest control function.

[Art]

Ok, its officially over for us with the expiration of the boil water order at about 5:00 p.m. today so after 8 days minus a few hours:

We expended about 2 gallons of reserve fuel, all of the water in the 5 gallon contractor cooler we fill for these emergencies plus about half a flat of bottled water and a few cans of reserve food. Other than that we used the stuff in our fridge and freezer. We will probably have to replace some shrubs which is no big deal. All in all from that point of view less for us than the hardship of a medium hurricane.

Every time we find something else we can use. We don't think much about winter storm emergencies. Because of this one we'll buy an electric space heater that we may never use but better safe than sorry.

We were pretty fortunate on he electric end, some people were without power for three plus days during the worst of it.

[Griff Murphey]

We had one burst pipe under the house in a copper water line. We had no water from Wednesday night to Friday morning. My week was a solid washout at my office.
Incidentally all these pundits saying how great El Paso did because it was on the national grid are ignoring the fact that El Paso had highs in the 40’s and 50’s while the rest of the state was freezing.