O, the weather outside is...

[jztemple2]

It was -8 degrees this morning when I was shoveling the drive and walk. Oddly, it didn't feel that cold. But I was bundled up pretty well and moving. And I didn't hang out any longer than necessary.

Back in the mid-seventies I went to college in Alamosa in the southern part of Colorado. I remember walking from the dorm to the class and it was ten below. I don't miss those temps now

[em2nought]

We had about 8" of snow the past 2 days. Yesterday was most of it, it warmed to the mid-30's and became slush. Each shovelful had to have been at least 30 lbs. Too heavy for my 10 year old to deal with

He's going to be scratching his head as to why he receives a weight set for his birthday, but we'll know.

[Exodor]

This cold snap has taught us that our house needs better insulation. It's 15F out now and the furnace can no longer keep up - it's trying to maintain 68F but it's 64F in here now and falling.

I have an appointment with an insulation contractor next week to get the attic and crawlspace done.

[Alefroth]

We're over the hump here. It got down to 3F Thursday morning, but we should be in the double digits for a while.

This isn't good. Regional utility is asking all customers to conserve what they can.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pacific- ... d5Fy7GDBuM

A massive storage facility in Washington state serving the natural gas network that provides electricity and heating fuel to millions of Americans from the Pacific Northwest south to New Mexico went down Saturday, HuffPost has learned.

The Jackson Prairie Underground Natural Gas Storage Facility in Lewis County, roughly two hours south of Seattle, suffered a complete outage, triggering an emergency on the 1,500-mile Northwest Pipeline that ships gas to power plants and heating networks across a region currently struck by arctic weather.

[The Meal]

We're back to positive temps here, but I see Tuesday has a low of -19°. Glad I can warm up my car before getting in it.

[Kurth]

Deadly. My town is in a state of emergency due to 3-4 inches of snow/ice that fell Saturday and gusty winds that blew over a record number of trees. One poor elderly guy was crushed to death in his sleep when a massive tree fell through his house and crashed right through his second floor bedroom.

Many here are out of power and have been for 72+ hours. With the temps in the teens, it's getting very cold. We've been lucky enough to avoid any wind damage and have kept power, but there's another ice storm forecast to hit us tomorrow morning. Not good.

[Lassr]

We got about an inch of sleet last night and getting about 5 inches+ of snow on top today. Someone in the neighborhood tried to escape last night, but unfortunately on our end, there is a hill you must go up to leave. At 12:30 AM, it took him 30 minutes to go about 75 feet up the hill. You could hear the loud engine gunning for 30 minutes, I assume he was spinning his tires to melt the sleet until he hit asphalt, but damn dude, we were trying to sleep.

Today the temps drop to about 15 with wind chills around -5. [sarcasm]Joy[/sarcasm]

[TheMix]

It's slowly warming up today. Earlier it was -5 degrees. Now it's only -3 degrees. And snowing. Which kind of surprises me. At least if it continues to snow, I probably won't have to shovel until tomorrow. (And maybe it'll be warmer.)

[Daehawk]

fROZEN. I NEED to go get kerosene for my heater and go to the bank. But everything from my frozen car door and windshield to the little voice in my head says DONT GO. Stay home. its 19...the world is frozen and Im low on eats, got no drinks , and no fuel for my heater. If the power goes out Im screwed and my my dog too. Its going to be frozen all week also. Maybe tomorrow will be easier.

Going to be 6 degrees tonight but slightly warmer tomorrow....maybe I can go tomorrow...or the next day when its supposed to rain...nothing frozen then.

And this ALL depends if my car stays running. I could end up stranded and using money I need for other things to pay for a ride home. IF I get to town.

[Lassr]

We got about 4 to 5 inches of a sleet/snow mix Monday and now it is frozen solid.
Roads are impassable still 4 days later and we are getting another layer of .5 inches of sleet and freezing rain today. May not get out of the house until Sunday.

Someone posted on Facebook a video of skating on the road next to Home Depot in Huntsville.

[Rumpy]

Wouldn't be surprised if you were to get black ice as well.

[Lassr]

Wouldn't be surprised if you were to get black ice as well.

Had that on the interstates where they scrapped it and left that thin layer. Many jack knifed semis the past week shutting down all lanes in one direction.

[Rumpy]

Yep, all it takes is a thin layer. Can be super dangerous. I think another word for it is glare ice, but I'm more familiar with calling it black ice.

[jztemple2]

Yep, all it takes is a thin layer. Can be super dangerous. I think another word for it is glare ice, but I'm more familiar with calling it black ice.

When I went to college in Colorado many years ago I would drive over the La Vita Pass over the eastern range of the Rockies twice each weekend, going up to Colorado Springs. I came across black ice quite a number of times. Thank goodness for studded snow tires.

[Rumpy]

That must have been some white-knuckled driving. I don't think studded tires are allowed on roads over here, as they have a tendency to damage them, particularly during the spring thaw. A good pair of snow tires is a must though, and not all-seasons.

[em2nought]

We got about 4 to 5 inches of a sleet/snow mix Monday and now it is frozen solid.
Roads are impassable still 4 days later and we are getting another layer of .5 inches of sleet and freezing rain today. May not get out of the house until Sunday.

Someone posted on Facebook a video of skating on the road next to Home Depot in Huntsville.

Would be funny if that was my sister. I'm pretty sure she still has her white ice skates.

[jztemple2]

It's going to be toasty the next few days. Definitely not Challenger weather. I remember that night distinctly, we had started cryo loading not too long after midnight and after loading I did what I usually do during these nighttime loadings, run out to my car to try to get a little nap before grabbing a bit of food and then returning to the firing room for the next few hours before launch. The temperature was less than 20 degF . I tried running the heater but sitting at idle it just couldn't keep up. After shivering for awhile I gave up and just toughed it out. Not a good day at all...

[Daehawk]

Supposed to warm here with water a flowing. Im ok with that. Now if my pipes will unfreeze so I can have water again.

[jztemple2]

Temperature hitting eighty today. The pool (with solar heating) is up to 75 degF so I took a dip. We've got a couple more days like this, then another cold blast hits.

[jztemple2]

A line of storms came through Central Florida tonight, including some hail:

[em2nought]

Jeez, I'm glad I didn't get hit by one of those AGAIN. My HOA would go up another $75.

[hepcat]

I’m betting some folks believe Taylor Swift is to blame for this too.

[em2nought]

I’m betting some folks believe Taylor Swift is to blame for this too.

Aren't all her songs about picking the wrong man for the job?

[Max Peck]

In the Maritimes, they've had some snow home invasions.

'The Cape Breton way': When windows started busting, apartment residents banded together

Bedi Singh was in his Sydney, N.S., apartment early Sunday afternoon with his girlfriend playing video games when a day of boredom was suddenly interrupted.

Between the snow accumulating outside of his ground-floor unit and the snow coming down from the building's roof, the pressure on windows in his unit was so intense that they started bursting.

"I was just on my bed and it fall down and boom, the living room [window] went down, my room window gone. Then 10 minutes later boom, another gone. Then 10 minutes later boom, another gone," said Singh.

Downtown Sydney was pummelled with 150 centimetres of snow during the winter storm that hit Nova Scotia this weekend. The Cape Breton Regional Municipality is under a local state of emergency.

Singh said the snow almost reached the second-floor units at his building. He gathered up about a dozen of the Rotary Drive building's residents and they went outside to shovel in front of other ground-floor units to prevent more windows from bursting.

[jztemple2]

That is a freaking bunch of snow .

Meanwhile, over on Yale Climate Connections, Does the Saffir-Simpson Scale for hurricanes need a Category 6?

In November 2013, the deep, warm waters east of the Philippines spawned an unprecedented storm: Super Typhoon Haiyan. Haiyan put on a shocking feat of rapid intensification, topping out with sustained winds of 195 mph and a central pressure of 895 mb just before plowing ashore with 190 mph winds on Leyte Island in the Philippines. No tropical cyclone like it had ever been reliably measured anywhere on Earth.

But since Haiyan, four other tropical cyclones have matched or exceeded its intensity. Three were super typhoons in the Western Pacific that also peaked with 195 mph peak winds: Meranti (2016), Goni (2020), and Surigae (2021).

The emergence of this new breed of ultrapowerful storms brings to light an Achilles’ heel in how hurricanes are classified, according to a paper published February 5 by hurricane scientists Michael Wehner and James Kossin: The growing inadequacy of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, which classifies hurricanes from Category 1 (minimal) to Category 5 (worst-case scenario).

Wehner and Kossin introduce a hypothetical Category 6 extension to the traditional Saffir-Simpson wind scale. They argue that such a classification may be appropriate to communicate how climate change has significantly boosted the winds of the most intense tropical cyclones. And they found that if the climate warms by 2 degrees Celsius or more — which could happen by midcentury — the risk of a such Category 6 storm in the Gulf of Mexico would double.

[Jaymann]

Got a jarring FLASH FLOOD! Amber alert this morning. It's barely drizzling outside.

[LordMortis]

Nearly 40 and calm in February. Getting me used to this kind of weather is going to suck when it reverts toward the mean. This is when it's supposed to be 0 with windchills in the negative 20s or 30s or even 40s.

[Pyperkub]

Category 6 incoming?

Hurricanes are rated on a scale from one to five, depending on their wind speeds. The higher the speed, the higher the category. But as climate change makes powerful storms more common, it may be necessary to add a sixth category, according to a new paper published by leading hurricane researchers.

The current five point scale, called the Saffir-Simpson scale, was introduced in the 1970s and is used by forecasters around the world including at the National Hurricane Center in Florida. Under the scale, storms with maximum wind speeds of 157 miles per hour or higher are designated as Category 5 hurricanes.

Category 5 storms used to be relatively rare. But climate change is making them more common, research shows. And some recent Category 5 storms have had such high wind speeds that it would make more sense to assign them to a Category 6, if such a category existed, the authors argue.

The authors of the new paper, James Kossin of the First Street Foundation and Michael Wehner of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have been studying the effects of climate change on hurricanes for decades. They propose that Category 5 should include hurricanes with maximum sustained winds of 157 to 192 miles per hour, and that a new Category 6 should include any storm with wind speeds above 192 miles per hour.

[Zarathud]

Even the hurricanes go up to 11.

[Pyperkub]

Yup, but still not a great indicator - from the article:

Under the new scale, Category 6 hurricanes would be exceedingly rare right now. For example, it might apply to 2013's Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines with wind speeds around 195 miles per hour. In fact, scientists in Taiwan argued at the time that Haiyan necessitated a new category designation.

Four other storms since 2013 would qualify for Category 6 status, including 2015's Hurricane Patricia, which hit Mexico, and three typhoons that formed near the Philippines in 2016, 2020 and 2021.

But other powerful storms wouldn't make the cut. For example, Hurricane Irma had sustained winds around 185 miles per hour when it hit the U.S. Virgin Islands in 2018 as a Category 5 storm. The wind damage from Irma led some residents to suggest that the storm should have been given a Category 6 designation ..

...And the new scale would do little to convey the particular danger from storms such as Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Florence or Hurricane Ida, which fit cleanly into the current wind speed scale, but caused deadly flooding from extreme rain. Climate change is to blame – studies have found that hurricanes and other storms are dropping more rain because a warmer atmosphere can hold more water.

[Unagi]

Nearly 40 and calm in February. Getting me used to this kind of weather is going to suck when it reverts toward the mean. This is when it's supposed to be 0 with windchills in the negative 20s or 30s or even 40s.

We are expected to hit 55 degrees tomorrow (48 today). Chicago in February?

I have two snow shovels leaning against my house, on our front porch. They look completely out of place in our recent weather, but I'm convinced they are keeping the frigid temperatures at bay; so I refuse to return them to the garage.

[Kraken]

Nearly 40 and calm in February. Getting me used to this kind of weather is going to suck when it reverts toward the mean. This is when it's supposed to be 0 with windchills in the negative 20s or 30s or even 40s.

We are expected to hit 55 degrees tomorrow (48 today). Chicago in February?

I have two snow shovels leaning against my house, on our front porch. They look completely out of place in our recent weather, but I'm convinced they are keeping the frigid temperatures at bay; so I refuse to return them to the garage.

Going to be the same here this weekend. I gassed up my snowblower in November and still haven't used it. Never needed it last year, either. This is not a complaint.

At least our long wet spell finally broke. It hasn't rained in a week and the forecast is dry as far out as it goes.

[Jeff V]

Record highs are possible tomorrow and Friday (Friday seems most promising). Might have thunderstorm tomorrow.

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, I just picked up some warmer biking pants and I'm going to try to go riding the next 4 days - going to be in the 50s - maybe 60 by the weekend. Then back into the 30s next week with some snow on Tuesday. If you told me I could go biking in February? That's crazy.

[em2nought]

Such nice weather I'm having trouble motivating myself to crawl under the van and replace the tie rods, ball joints, and sway bar links.

Did successfully replace the naughty coil pack on cylinder #4. Took a little drive to get away after confining myself to the local territory while the van was running rough. Had a swell chicken sandwich at a wonderful place I won't mention by name.

sway bar links, not control arms

[jztemple2]

Such nice weather I'm having trouble motivating myself to crawl under the van and replace the tie rods, ball joints, and control arms.

Did successfully replace the naughty coil pack on cylinder #4. Took a little drive to get away after confining myself to the local territory while the van was running rough. Had a swell chicken sandwich at a wonderful place I won't mention by name.

I am always in awe of folks who can do that kind of work on their car. I toot my horn for you!

[em2nought]

Such nice weather I'm having trouble motivating myself to crawl under the van and replace the tie rods, ball joints, and sway bar links.

Did successfully replace the naughty coil pack on cylinder #4. Took a little drive to get away after confining myself to the local territory while the van was running rough. Had a swell chicken sandwich at a wonderful place I won't mention by name.

I am always in awe of folks who can do that kind of work on their car. I toot my horn for you!

If it's any consolation, I should have done it over two years ago. ...and I haven't accomplished it yet, job might turn into nastiness.

Oddly on the coil pack O'reilly's code read out gave me the code number but just said it was a bad coil pack and not necessarily which one when the code actually indicated cylinder #4 which I learned from a youtuber's video of him replacing the very same coil pack. Just lucky it was on the front of the engine instead of the rear. The rear three cylinders are a bear to get at on this model. Wipers come off, sections under the wipers come off, other things come off and that's just to get back there to do the work. I'd probably still not have done the job yet if it had been a coil pack in the rear.

[jztemple2]

Magnitude 4.0 earthquake strikes just east of Cape Canaveral

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded Wednesday night about 100 miles off Cape Canaveral.

The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake happened at about 10:48 p.m.

It was about 10 kilometers underneath the ocean floor, or about 6.2 miles.

There were no immediate reports of any damage on Florida's east coast.

[LordMortis]

Two days in a row of breaking 60 in the middle of February??? Well, I'm getting walks in outside and able to work on plumbing to flush water outside. so yeah?

[Kraken]

Two days in a row of breaking 60 in the middle of February??? Well, I'm getting walks in outside and able to work on plumbing to flush water outside. so yeah?

It could reach 60 here tomorrow. The record high for the date is 60, set last year. I guess two years in a row means 60-degree days in February are normal now.