How’s the weather?

[jjohnwm]

We were gifted with an additional 2-3 inches of snow last night; the forecast suddenly changed yesterday evening to indicate another fairly heavy dump of snow during the night, but it turned out to be much less than expected. Of course, since none at all was expected until about supper time last night...who knows?

Clouds of satellites orbiting the earth, monitoring every square inch of the planetary surface...supercomputers compiling and collating all that data to the 47th decimal place...and a large-ish snowstorm that affects the southern half of two huge provinces manages to go undetected, uncollated, unknown and un-forecast until about 5 hours before it hits.

Cripes...might as well just read the Farmers' Almanac to know what's going to happen next...

The Powers That Be are so concerned with how to keep the peasantry in a continually terrified state...that they seem to miss one simple truth: demonstrating that they haven't got a clue what's going on, or how to deal with it, is enough to scare anybody, no further effort required.

pacu mom , I'm amazed at how unreliable your local electrical supply is! For the past 25-ish years I have lived in fairly rural locales, in two different provinces, and power outages have been quite rare and almost always very short. Astonishingly, the period of time when I lived in a suburb of Toronto back in the 80's was my worst period for outages; they've been blessedly rare out here in the sticks.

 

[pacu mom]

pacu mom , I'm amazed at how unreliable your local electrical supply is! For the past 25-ish years I have lived in fairly rural locales, in two different provinces, and power outages have been quite rare and almost always very short. Astonishingly, the period of time when I lived in a suburb of Toronto back in the 80's was my worst period for outages; they've been blessedly rare out here in the sticks.

They came Friday and filled the propane tank (only took 47 gallons), so generator can go quite a while. All the trees around here falling down on power lines and substations is the problem. Although in Washington state 4 substations were vandalized last week. Earlier this year I checked out solar systems which would cost $50,000 - 70,000. But why should I pay all that $$$ to generate power for the electric company and still be without power during an outage. I'd be in my nineties before I broke even between what I save and what I paid. I also checked out an off grid system. The equipment would cost $50,000+ and I would have to hire someone to install it. I decided I'd rather remodel my kitchen than get a solar system...maybe I'll save my money for a solar system after I remodel my kitchen....

 

[Jexnell]

They came Friday and filled the propane tank (only took 47 gallons), so generator can go quite a while. All the trees around here falling down on power lines and substations is the problem. Although in Washington state 4 substations were vandalized last week. Earlier this year I checked out solar systems which would cost $50,000 - 70,000. But why should I pay all that $$$ to generate power for the electric company and still be without power during an outage. I'd be in my nineties before I broke even between what I save and what I paid. I also checked out an off grid system. The equipment would cost $50,000+ and I would have to hire someone to install it. I decided I'd rather remodel my kitchen than get a solar system...maybe I'll save my money for a solar system after I remodel my kitchen....

Have you seen these, don't know pricing but they seem like a nice all in one kit type of thing to go solar.

The Solar Flower You Need to Experience — Smartflower

Smartflower is the innovative sculptural solar flower with advanced photovoltaic solar panels that open and close to cleaning itself for maximum efficiency.

smartflower.com

Will self deployment, and retract depending on weather/wind etc. Follows the sun while deployed to always get full solar power. Battery backup to run at nights etc.

Got the pic from Google

 

[pacu mom]

Emergency updates: 36 minutes ago - power line down across main road in our area with flames showing. Local fire dept. on scene.

18 minutes ago - they are still waiting for power company to respond.

Don't know if I can get past to pick up my microwave oven so I can reheat Christmas dinner leftovers.... cold tamales don't sound appetizing... oh, the power line was secured and is no longer a hazard. Headed to town....hopefully no trees fall.


good news is I got another email from the power company stating that power will be restored by 11:30 pm today, although they still haven't come to check out the downed power line. What chaos.

 

[skjl47]

They came Friday and filled the propane tank (only took 47 gallons), so generator can go quite a while. All the trees around here falling down on power lines and substations is the problem. Although in Washington state 4 substations were vandalized last week. Earlier this year I checked out solar systems which would cost $50,000 - 70,000. But why should I pay all that $$$ to generate power for the electric company and still be without power during an outage. I'd be in my nineties before I broke even between what I save and what I paid. I also checked out an off grid system. The equipment would cost $50,000+ and I would have to hire someone to install it. I decided I'd rather remodel my kitchen than get a solar system...maybe I'll save my money for a solar system after I remodel my kitchen....

Hello; Been having a back and forth about solar systems, EV's and the "green agenda" in a different site. Things are changing with solar panel deals. Power companies are reducing the pay back to solar panel owners. You can still send excess power to the grid but will get a lot less, maybe nothing in some places, than before. This will make the payback time even longer.
If a person can afford to have both the solar panels and an energy storage system that might work. Old EV battery packs are removed from the EV's once they can only be charged to 70% capacity. The old used battery packs can be used as power storage in a home setting. How much power in storage is the same as the old hot rod question of how fast do you want to go? Go fast = spend more money. More storage = buy more batteries.
One guy from Australia recently told me if you have $350 to $400 electric bill/month the payback time can be under ten years from the reduced electric bill alone. Of course, he is in Australia and i am not sure he has anything approaching our winters when solar does not work well.

 

[esoxlucius]

No ice storms, no sub zero temps, no snow, and certainly no heatwaves, lol. All we have is typical Blighty wet, wet wet.....everyday!

 

[jjohnwm]

<<<sigh>>>

Another 5 - 6 inches of fluffy white crap last night, far more than the forecast called for. It's still falling now, well after noon. As usual, I am hoping to wait for it to stop before I plow and blow it; there are few things more irritating than getting the driveway and walkways clear, and then getting another half-inch just to mess them up again.

Right now it's looking like the kind of snowfall that makes me forget about the snowblower and the ATV/plow and just call my neighbour with the big John Deere, who clears my entire driveway in about 2 minutes as opposed to 2 hours of cursing behind a snowblower. And the techno-wizards who are paid to monitor and foresee these events didn't know about it until just before it started, and continue to underestimate its extent.

 

[deeda]

Sorry to hear of your latest snow woes jjohnwm . I don't know how the weather forecasters miss these type of events.

We've seen increasing temperatures the last few days, actually had a sunny day yesterday and right now it's 50F with rain expected Saturday.

 

[jjohnwm]

...snow woes...

It's not the snow that is the irritation; snow is a fact of life, neither good nor bad, and this amount of snowfall overnight is absolutely to be expected multiple times each winter...no big deal...

...BUT...how does the weather system that produces it manage to sneak up on us and catch all the "experts" unawares???

I would love to see a weather forecaster for one of the major networks or even a local radio station, perhaps a senior meteorologist who is about to retire, open his/her segment with "Okay, I know that we screwed up so badly yesterday that there is absolutely no earthly reason for anyone to listen to us ever again...but really, it's not our fault! We do the best we can, but the simple fact is that none of us even bother to look out the window anymore. We read the charts, and look at the data from satellites and weather stations, and we feed all that data into the supercomputer and wait for it to decide what's going on. Then...once again without even bothering to look out the window!...we read that forecast to you, the public, many of whom are dependent upon the weather to determine what you are going to do the next day and how you are going to do it. If it turns out to be accurate...we smugly repeat the performance the next day and hope to be right again. And if it turns out to be wildly inaccurate...we still smugly repeat the whole thing the next day as if nothing had happened! So get used to it! Because...we don't really care one way or the other!"

 

[jjohnwm]

Wow! We have been subject to so many successive days of grey, dull, dreary, sunless, joyless weather...that the sight of a clear sky and bright sun this morning was like a tonic. Absolutely beautiful; warm (-12C), windless...just gorgeous.


I just slapped this feeder together yesterday, stuffed it full of 10 pounds of suet...and here's one of my favourite birds enjoying it. It's a Pileated Woodpecker, roughly the size of a crow.


My bestest buddy Duke has just spotted a deer across the field...but in order to bark, he has to drop his toy...decisions, decisions...