The 8-Bit Guys house in Texas - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Homer J Simpson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2021, 10:37:47 pm
content: Lots in the news on the weather and power situation in Texas.

author: MikeK
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2021, 10:57:32 pm
content: One of the many reasons not to live in Texas. lol

author: GlennSprigg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pm
content: Quote from: MikeK on February 19, 2021, 10:57:32 pmHa!!... I'm reminded of one of the (factual) quotes by some Aussies when Americans talk about how everythingis so big there.... Well, in Australia, we have a single privately owned cattle station in the out-back, that isbigger than the whole State of Texas !! I don't know what it proves, but it's true! haha...

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 02:51:44 pm
content: So, living in a state that for historical ideological/political reasons, doesn't have its power grid linked to the rest of ConUSA, being reasonably well off, and not having any sort of non-electric heating in spite of the fact that winter temperatures regularly go below zero (C), seems short-sighted at best.Also anyone who's ever owned a boat big enough to sleep on or a RV, or a holiday cabin anywhere that it freezes in winter, and most DIYers know that if sustained below zero temperatures are expected with no or unreliable heating, you need to winterize all the plumbing. 'Bailing out' without shutting off the water was IQ below (unheated) room temperature stupid. A smart guy would have shut off the water and drained as much of the plumbing as was practical without special tools or compressed air.However he's got a history of 'stupid'https://www.eevblog.com/forum/vintage-computing/video-the-8-bit-guy-commits-atrocities-on-a-vintage-ibm-computer/It doesn't help that modern American home construction doesn't cope with unexpected water leakage anywhere near as well as traditional European construction. Stud and plasterboard walls on a slab leave nowhere for any leakage to go without damage so instead of having to rip the plasterboard off one wall and re-do it, the whole house got flooded. If there'd been a plank floor with a void beneath it and a drain at the lowest point, the damage would have been limited to one room. If you are building a house on a slab, consider putting slot type floor drains across the doorways of kitchens and bathrooms, and sealing their flooring to the walls hospital style.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 03:07:08 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 02:51:44 pmI lived in TX. I don't agree with "winter temperatures regularly go below zero (C)". It was rare and usually only for the hour or so before day break. I'm not surprised that heating is primarily electric. Now I live in NC, and every year we get ice storms (a scary term basically meaning freezing rain) and they can leave rural areas without electricity for a few days. We also get tornadoes and hurricanes. But so does TX. This is the bit I don't understand about The 8-bit Guy who lives in a hurricane and tornado-prone location - why doesn't he have a generator? In NC, often when the power goes out, you hear the hum of generators from all around. Granted, if it was 0F then you might have had no luck getting a generator going.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 03:22:46 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 02:51:44 pmYep. He talked about getting snow regularly, but people used to snow are DEFINITELY used to protecting outside plumbing. If they ever leave the house unattended they are also used to turning off the main water valve to the house.Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 02:51:44 pmJust opening a tap or two to relieve the pressure in the pipes is usually enough. Water doesn't usually expand enough to burst pipe if you start from zero pressure.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 04:17:21 pm
content: @JohnnyMalaria,I did check climate stats for the Dallas/Fort Worth area before I made that comment:https://www.weather.gov/fwd/d32dataOf course Texas is a big state, extending over 10 degrees of latitude, and local microclimates can elevate minimum temperatures by several degrees so I don't doubt your experience. YMMV.

author: drussell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 04:20:36 pm
content: Yeah, leaving your home unattended in freezing temperatures with no power and heat without turning off the water is pretty silly. I would have at least shut it off and tried to drain as much as possible to limit potential damage. I've always got some plumbing antifreeze out in the garage, would have poured a little in each sink trap and toilet too. If you at least drain your water heater, washing machine inlet hoses and dishwasher inlet valve you've eliminated the most costly replacement items and with the main water off it will minimize any damage to the house itself. Repairing a few burst pipes is an expense and is certainly annoying, but notnearlyas bad as if you flood your house first.

author: tpowell1830
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pm
content: I don't know where this guy lives in Texas, but the temperatures that we saw during this storm was well below the winter temperatures that we normally get. Although I think it is unfortunate for all those many people who had pipes burst, the typical method for handling this is similar to what Ian described above. I don't know why this guy didn't think of this, but many people were caught with the same problem. In my area in Houston, the temperature dropped to the mid teens fahrenheit, and just north, in the single digits F, which is extremely rare. I prepared my pipes and outside water faucets because it was well publicized that the temps would be very well below normal. Preparation is key for a 120 year event like this. Again, this was revealed to everyone on the TV news channels, well in advance of this occurrence. You have to be aware that, in my area, the temperature rarely gets below 32 F (0 C) and if it does, it lasts a day, rarely more.However, all I see is criticism and hate in the comments, not a bit of empathy. I don't understand this attitude. Perhaps someone could explain. Many people suffered during this extremely rare occurrence, blaming their ignorance is hardly justified.As far as the comment about Texas being energy independent, this is true. One of the problems is that Texas produces more energy than it normally needs, and ERCOT had started selling power to neighboring states, which caused a power imbalance. Also, the electrical infrastructure is not really designed for such an ice storm as this, causing other technical problems and rolling blackouts. Once the temperatures climbed back above freezing, the blackouts stopped in my area. I hear from friends in other areas that they still do not have electricity after 4 days, but the storm is over now and things should be getting back to normal.I for one am not looking for sympathy or empathy, never have, even in the most dire situations, but I do have sympathy for those that suffered and I hope that their lives and homes will be back to normal soon. Some children and elderly suffered, and some died in all of this and I wish them and their families nothing but the best.The temperature here now is a balmy 66 F.EDIT: One of the many problems in an ice storm where the infrastructure is not designed to handle is the roads. Many of our interstate highways have bridges and overpasses that will gather black ice and this cripples commerce. This is one of the reasons that grocery stores are empty. As the wreck in FW/Dal shows, it is disastrous to get out on the road during an ice storm in Texas, as rare as they are.

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 04:49:49 pm
content: Quote from: drussell on February 21, 2021, 04:20:36 pmIf you don't have plumbing/RV antifreeze, a good handful of salt dumped into each sink, bath or shower trap, and a couple of handfuls dumped into the toilet and any larger interior floor drains will provide freeze protection down to about -20 deg C. Even if there isn't enough salt in solution to stop the traps freezing it will be slushy ice that cant burst them. However its not great for long-term winterization and isn't suitable for winterizing appliances as the strong brine solution may slowly corrode metal parts.Its possible he was confused due to borderline hypothermia, but I'm probably being over-generous to suggest that . . .

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 05:07:59 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 04:49:49 pmSure, hindsight is wonderful. But Texas isn't used to that extreme cold. And based on how people panic buy when a hurricane threatens where I live, I would expect most people would have had a hard time finding stuff or knowing how to prepare.Most of the continental US simply doesn't have the population density to raise enough taxes to construct the kind of utility infrastructure found in more dense places such as Europe. When I moved from Europe to the US in the 90s, it struck me that there is a significant cultural difference: things are built to be sufficient, not necessarily to withstand rare weather events. And the weather is more extreme, too.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 05:18:22 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 04:17:21 pmGreat, which means all you have to go on is a table of numbers. Texas is big and unbelievably flat (except in the west) and there really aren't any microclimates, especially in the Austin-Dallas-Houston triangle where I lived. In fact, the weather for the entire state is quite predictable. Summer: 95F/95%RH. Clipper fronts general sweep down from the arctic but fizzle out before affecting Texas too much except in the winter when such fronts survive. The climate is nothing like Europe, for example.Most of those "freeze" events would have been for about an hour or two before sunrise - not enough time to freeze pipes. This recent event is different. Prolonged and extreme low temperatures will freeze pipes quickly.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 05:37:59 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pmThat's a bit of an exaggeration, like by 25X. And it is big and dry and doesn't support very many cattle.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_Station

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 05:50:41 pm
content: Quote from: bdunham7 on February 21, 2021, 05:37:59 pmI'd say it is whoefully inadequate. Amateur farming at best. The Netherlands has 1.5 times the land surface but has room for 97 million chickens, 12 million pigs and 3.9 million cows.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 05:56:04 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 21, 2021, 05:18:22 pmA hard freeze may be rare, but not unheard of. There have been enough similar events in the past few decades to give sufficient warning. It's analogous to earthquake protection here in SoCal--severe earthquakes are 'rare' but can happen anytime, so building codes and other policies have been adapted to be ready for them.Where I live there would also be devastation if we got weather like Texas just had. The difference is that the area has never, ever had such weather as opposed to having it once a decade.

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 06:02:08 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on February 21, 2021, 05:50:41 pmIt's ranching, not farming.And you can have all the land you want, but without water you don't get much.https://www.google.com/maps/place/Anna+Creek+Station/@-28.7992332,135.9691554,73029m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6a9cad5aad729a97:0x217767942e6c9550!8m2!3d-28.7564672!4d136.0657452?hl=en&authuser=0(click 'Satellite View')

author: ebastler
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 08:28:47 pm
content: Quote from: bdunham7 on February 21, 2021, 05:37:59 pmWell, "bigger than Texas" vs. "bigger than Israel" -- easy to confound; I mix those two up all the time...

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 09:16:29 pm
content: Quote from: ebastler on February 21, 2021, 08:28:47 pmAnd Australia is right next to Germany, right?

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 09:58:34 pm
content: Talk about over exaggerating,an inch or 2 of nice clean water and the place is "ruined".Try 3+ foot of mixed flood/river/canal/sewage water,that's how you ruin a building and make it nigh on impossible to get flood insurance again.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:07:13 pm
content: Quote from: MikeK on February 19, 2021, 10:57:32 pmI think you'd be hard pressed to find a state that doesn't have reasons not to live in it. Earthquakes, wildfires, floods, tornadoes, animals that will try to kill you, climate, economics, politics, geographic features, there's always something. You make your choices, settle down and hope for the best.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:14:06 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 04:49:49 pmJust make sure you don't have metal pipes before you use salt, a metal P-trap and drain tail are fairly common in older homes and most US houses have a garbage disposal in the kitchen, and houses from the 1950s and earlier often have iron drain pipes, salt will quickly corrode any of these things. I spilled a grain of air dryer crystals (calcium salt IIRC) in the sink at our cabin a few years ago and it rusted a spot on the stainless steel sink.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:19:30 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on February 21, 2021, 09:58:34 pmYour frame of reference is different.I've lived half my life in the UK and half in the southern US. Hardly anything about houses is the same. A building made of brick, concrete and plaster is very different than one made of wood, drywall and fibreglass insulation. Damp and mold are extremely serious issues for houses in the US. I learned that the hard way when I bought my first house in the US. Houses here simply aren't designed to last 100 years. It makes properties cheaper but everyone accepts the risk and finite longevity of the property.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:20:15 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on February 21, 2021, 09:58:34 pmAn inch or two of clean water that sits in a house for any length of time is enough to "ruin" it in the sense that it's going to have to be completely gutted. Carpet and flooring will be destroyed, drywall will often start growing mold that is virtually impossible to stop, requiring it to all be removed. It's common for particle board to be used as a base under laminate flooring and that will swell up like a sponge so all of the flooring has to be ripped out and replaced. Most kitchen and bathroom cabinets are made of particle board so any at the floor level will swell up and start falling apart. It may not look nearly as bad, and it won't be as gross to clean it out, but the financial cost of dealing with 3' of sewer water vs 2" of clean water is probably not as significant as you think. They're both going to require the interior to be stripped down to bare studs.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:31:17 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 21, 2021, 10:20:15 pmFor a typical US build house that is. As JohnnyMalaria stated there is a huge difference between how houses are build in Europe versus the US. In Europe a typical house is built to be there for 100+ years. You can throw water and wind at it but worst case you need to replace some roof tiles, windows / doors and/or wall paper.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 10:39:27 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on February 21, 2021, 10:31:17 pmWell that's kind of irrelevant since we're discussing an event in Texas which is an area that is full of typical US houses. There are lots of 100+ year old houses in some parts of the US but outside of the cities most areas were pretty sparse 100 years ago and inside the cities land is so valuable that most structures get demolished and replaced due to obsolescence long before that. I think some of it is probably cultural too, I like old houses but most Americans would prefer to live in something new, and I have seen lots of people buy a perfectly good older house, then either tear it down and replace it with something big and modern but more cheaply built, or gut it and replace all of the old but high quality wood cabinets with modern looking stuff that is built of cheap particle board. I suppose houses don't have to last 100 years because most will end up being replaced for other reasons.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 11:38:35 pm
content: Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pmHe lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex and I can also confirm the rarity of such events.Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pmI would have probably done the same if I had left my house, but during the power outage we still had gas+water and the roads were still in pretty bad shape for driving, thus shutting off the water was not an option. Fortunately power was restored the next day (30h total), otherwise we would have left just like David.During the -15°C night, where temps inside the house reached 2°C, we had some of the upstairs pipes frozen despite leaving the faucets dripping - no burst pipes, fortunately. Many in my neighbourhood did the same and had burst pipes. Not much else people could do, especially given the driving conditions were still very poor.Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pmWell, it is easy to throw rocks in scenarios thst are common in other places. Coming from Brazil, we could never understand how so many people died in those "heat waves" in Europe, until you learn the specificities of the place. A Dallas Texan, used to 40+ days of 40°C+ temperatures Every. Single. Summer would be equally baffled.Quote from: tpowell1830 on February 21, 2021, 04:25:25 pmThis is a true problem that is severely compounded by the lack of equipment to deal with that (snow plows and salt road trucks are not common), lack of appropriate tires, as well as training/experience to drive in such conditions (apart from the idiots that think it is the same as a heavy rain). I had to learn by practice, but I can't claim any proficiency.Quote from: james_s on February 21, 2021, 10:39:27 pmThat is true, but I really dislike the way houses are built here... Styrofoam, cardboard and lollipop sticks seem to be the norm.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2021, 11:47:50 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 21, 2021, 11:38:35 pmModern US houses are crap, no argument there. They're built as cheaply as possible and it's because people either don't know or don't care, by the time the place falls apart they'll live somewhere else is how most people think. They go gaga over trendy granite countertops and up to date flooring but ask most people about the framing, plumbing, electrical and mechanicals and they'll be completely clueless. I'm in the opposite camp and could not care less about styles and trends but I accept the fact that I'm in the minority.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 12:24:51 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 21, 2021, 10:20:15 pmGee, then the house that I'm sitting in right now has been ruined at least four times! But my take is that it's only "ruined" if you're a totally irresponsible home owner and you just throw your hands up in the air and expect your insurance company or someone else,anyone else, to deal withyourproblems. That seems to clearly be the case with the 8-bit guy. Those of us to do take responsibility for dealing with our own problems would have grabbed a wet vac (and a generator if necessary) and gotten up all of the water and then dried out the room with a heater and then wouldn't have had a mold issue. Or more likely, we would have stayed home to start with and found a way to keep some heat in the house and/or drained the pipes, instead of high tailing it to a motel when things got uncomfortable and simply abandoning our home to it's fate with no preparations!Anymore, the US seems to be FULL of inept, lazy, stupid people that can't even manage to turn off the water by themselves and they line up by the thousands to whine and cry on television and demand that "The Government" take care of them!Speaking as someone who's current house has been flooded four times and also had two previous homes in Virginia flooded during HARD freezes and with no power.And BTW one of my 60+ year old female cousins was in Abilene, Texas (near the northern panhandle) during the freeze and at the same time had Covid and she stayedin a mobile homeby herself and managed with no great difficulty despite losing power.I have NO sympathy for the 8-bit guy or most of the other whinny people on television that failed to prepare for this WELL announced cold weather event.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 12:43:38 am
content: Quote from: Stray Electron on February 22, 2021, 12:24:51 amWas he asking for sympathy? No. He was just reporting what happened. And he has insurance so, yes, let them deal with it.Sorry, but if you think you can be certain that a heating a room will remove all the damp in the insulation behind the drywall, then you are very wrong. For damage like that, doing the remedial work yourself just to save on the insurance deductible is daft.Precautions can only help so far. For example, after I got married, I moved from my house but I kept it. I turned the water off at the street. No problem. Until one winter's day, I went to check on the house. First thing I did was to turn the water on. Imagine my surprise when I saw the meter turning. Well, into the house I went, searching for running water. Eventually, I found it - a burst pipe in the crawl space (I will NEVER buy a house with a crawl space ever again but that's another tragedy I won't tell). How so? The city had been around and installed meters for remote reading and turned my water back on.Shit happens. Telling people they're dicks just because they are human is, well, dickish. I hope tragedy never befalls you because of a poor decision.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 02:35:11 am
content: I live in Mississippi and have been here nearly 20 years. This storm was very unusual and intense. In the previous two decades I've seen snow here twice and in both cases it was gone in a day or two. This storm was probably 20% snow and 80% ice. Ice storms are bad news. When everything is encased in thick ice, there's not much you can do except wait for it to thaw. Temperatures rarely go below freezing here, this week there was a stretch of several days when it didn't get above 20 degrees. Yesterday it finally started to warm up and today it got to 60 degrees, but there's still ice on the ground in places.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 02:37:48 am
content: Usually the insurance doesn't WANT you to deal with it. In fact if you do interfere and start cleaning up before they've had an adjuster out there to inspect it that can make things harder for you. It's not intuitive at all but that's how it is. Sounds like he was not home when the flooding happened so it may have sat for a while before he knew what was wrong. Particle board swelling and mold damage are going to be very real concerns. Letting the insurance handle it is what you do when a major disaster like this happens, that's what people have insurance for. You might get it all cleaned up and then find out several years later that you've got mold growing in the drywall, or water damage in electrical or mechanical systems. Inches of water sitting for days isn't something you just clean up with a shop vac and dry out with a heater, not unless that's your only option and you don't mind putting up with damage, the extent of which you probably don't fully know. If the power is out he probably can't do much to clean it up anyway, even if he has a generator he may not be able to get fuel for it.When we had a major storm roll through my area back around 2007 it knocked down several transmission lines and the power was out in some areas for over a week. That included power for gas stations so even a lot of people that had generators couldn't get fuel for them. One can argue that people should be more prepared, gas stations included, but nothing like that had ever happened before in my lifetime. I remember stocks of generators were depleted quickly so there were a lot of people who couldn't get one.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 02:44:25 am
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 22, 2021, 12:43:38 amI don't have a crawl space but wish I did. Not because I enjoy spending time crawling around in them, but the ground floor is much less cold in the winter when there's something other than a concrete slab underneath. It's also nice to have access under the floors in order to run wires or plumbing, mine is all in the ceiling above the ground floor of the daylight basement and only the portion above the laundry room that has a suspended ceiling is accessible without cutting holes in sheetrock. I'd consider a crawl space to be a nice luxury, the edge case of preventing burst pipes during a long term hibernation can be dealt with. Our cabin has drain valves at the low points so I drain the plumbing as part of winterizing it. Pex piping is also fairly tolerant of freezing but I like the fact that copper is anti-microbial and I've had bad experience with the water tasting like plastic in some places I've been.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 03:07:10 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 22, 2021, 02:44:25 amI wish as well. When we did a foundation repair on the house, the cost of fixing the pipes under the house was significant and nobody guarantees the clay soil will never move again, thus a damocles' sword.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 03:27:36 pm
content: Retrieving half-liquefied possum carcasses from a 2' high crawl space in the middle of August in NC is not fun.Ripping out 400 sq.ft. fiberglass insulation infested with mouse turds, urine, balls of desiccated ants falling on your face not fun.Water seeping through the bricks causing major damp issues not fun.Someone breaking into the crawl space and trying to steal the dehumidifier...it was too heavy to move so they left it unplugged. I wasn't living there. When I went to check on things, I opened the front door only to find mold on all the carpets and walls throughout the house.But access to the wiring etc etc, useful.I'll amend my statement to say that if I now know exactly what to look out for with a crawl space and can instantly spot major potential i$$ues.That house was a nightmare but a great lesson. Coming from a land of masonry houses, I had no idea about typical lumber houses in the US. The sellers knew about the damp issue and saw me coming. During one viewing, I mentioned a musty smell. In the UK, it wouldn't have alarmed me - a quick wipe-down with bleach would have solved the problem. Now, if I sense the slightest hint of mold, I'm gone.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 22, 2021, 08:06:16 pm
content: Well it's important to keep the crawlspace closed up, one of the vent screens fell off my mother's place and I had to pull a similar animal corpse out of there, as well as rats got in and left droppings all over and peed on the insulation around the heating ducts, yuck! I don't think that's all that typical though, it's just one of those things that can happen but not something I'd expect everyone to experience. Mold is also not typically a problem unless something leaks, however some climates are probably a lot more likely to experience mold from general humidity than others. Then there are challenges in leaving a place unoccupied for any length of time. Stuff deteriorates surprisingly quickly when nobody is there to care for it, and thieves make the situation worse. Having your dehumidifier unplugged is annoying but at least they didn't rip out all of the copper pipes and wiring to sell for scrap. Hope ownership can be a pain, but IMHO it sure beats paying someone else's mortgage by way of rent payments.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 01:12:50 am
content: Texas definitely has weird weather. This one was a doozer, compounded by privatisation of energy supplies.Two weird experiences when I lived in Austin:I was about 5km from home when I called my wife using phone patch via the W5EBJ repeater to tell her it was snowing. She said it was not snowing at home. A couple of sandbaggers called in to say it was not snowing where they were either. That was the only snow I saw in Texas in the winter of 1992/93 and it seemingly only snowed in a very small area.We did a day trip to Senora. On the way back it rained ice (not snow). The helical antenna on top of the car became a big block of ice. The doors were thick and heavy with ice. But when we got back to Austin, I never saw any other car caked with ice. I got looks from various people as I drove into town and was queried at out local Texaco petrol station as to where I had been. There had been no precipitation in Austin.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 07:44:31 pm
content: Quote from: bdunham7 on February 21, 2021, 05:56:04 pmI wholeheartedly agree. Buildings and infrastructure should be designed to withstand once in a lifetime events. Take Cambridge, England, for example. Typical of Western Europe, the average temperatures for the warmest and coldest months are fairly moderate, but the record hot and cold temperatures are more extreme, although not to the same extent as many places in Texas.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge#ClimateWe have had problems in the UK with infrastructure being inadequate for temperature extremes, more so with hot, than cold in recent years.Of course we need to accept that sometimes bad things will happen, due to the weather and there's nothing that can be done about it. Note that in Cambridge the record February high is close to the average high for late-May/early-June, which has also recorded freezing temperatures. Both extremis can completely destroy crops. A late frost in June will kill an entire grape crop and record warmth in February can cause plants to grow far too early, only to be frozen later.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 07:55:40 pm
content: As a former resident of Melbourn, Cambs., and College Station, TX, and now NC, I can honestly say the climate extremes in the UK are nothing like here. Some once-in-a-lifetime events just cannot be accommodated without changing the entire way properties are built. For example, I don't think any typical house in the US could survive a direct tornado hit. However, most are engineered to withstand at least Cat 1 hurricanes. But as current events in the UK show, flooding is the major issue.As I stated previously, the mentality to construction is different here compared to the UK (at least).

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 08:21:04 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 23, 2021, 07:55:40 pmThat's because Texas exports its heat to the UK, and we are very thankful for it. At least until the Day After Tomorrow.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 08:28:15 pm
content: I concur that there is a sharp contrast between the best of European building practice and the worst of American.Let's add to that the risk of fire.It's easy to total an American house in a fire; a concrete European house is not so vulnerable.Quick, cheap and shoddy is an American standard.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 08:47:05 pm
content: Quote from: Renate on February 23, 2021, 08:28:15 pmThat was true in England until 1666.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 09:00:42 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 23, 2021, 08:47:05 pmI take the precaution of burying my cheese in the back yard.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 09:29:10 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 23, 2021, 07:55:40 pmInteresting. What did you do in Cambridge?Yes, the climate is far less extreme than Texas.One thing to note is we do go through phases of cold winters and extreme heat in summer. The last three summers all had an an extreme for us, heatwaves with temperatures in the high 30s C and around the turn of last decade, we had a series of cold winters with lows around -15C. Nowhere near as extreme as the US, but I believe a similar phenomenon occurs there too. Changes in sea surface temperatures and solar activity, can cause extreme seasons occur over a short period. I wouldn't be surprised if next winter is similar.Quote from: coppice on February 23, 2021, 08:21:04 pmThat's one of the oldest myths in the book or meteorology. The UK gets very little heat from the Gulf Stream. The reason why Western Europe is colder, than corresponding parallels on the eastern side of North America, is because it's downwind of a large expanse of ocean. Western North America has similar temperatures to equivalent latitudes in Western Europe, because of the westerlies blowing over the warm Pacific. The east coasts of large landmasses are uniquely cold. The nearby sea limits summer warmth and in winter, the wind has blown over a the freezing continent, although it's a little less cold then, than further inland.For example, we normally think of Canada as a cold country, but the west coast has a similar climate to Northern Europe, with Vancouver and Calais having similar average temperatures.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vancouver#Climatehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais#Geography_and_climateDon't believe the scare stories about the Gulf Stream changing its course, plunging Europe into the freezer. It will affect our climate, but as long as the prevailing wind blows from the west and we're next to the Atlantic, we'll be milder than Eastern Canada.

author: nali
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 09:57:13 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 23, 2021, 07:55:40 pmOT but, part of my old stomping ground as a teenager! My parents were regulars at the Cambridge Motel until it closed.My Dad was always surprised I could remember the name of Dimos who ran the place... it was too much work to try to explain to him about MOSFETs

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 10:08:11 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 23, 2021, 09:29:10 pmDrove mindlessly up and down the A10 to Ware until I found an escape route to the sunQuote from: Zero999 on February 23, 2021, 09:29:10 pmI have to disagree. Cambridge, for example, is the same latitude as Labrador. Much of the rain in NW Europe is exactly because of the moist air carried by the gulf stream eventually cooling enough to dump the water. Watch the path tropical waves off the west coast of Africa typically take - they head towards the east US and then travel up the coast on the gulf stream only to dump on Europe. The reasons that make NW Europe warmer than the American Atlantic coastal regions at the same latitude are the same as why the Pacific waters are much cooler than the Atlantic equivalents - large clockwise currents in the northern hemisphere.

author: Caliaxy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 10:34:21 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pmThat reminds me of a joke:The old farmer from Texas says, "When I had my ranch, I could get up in the morning, get in my truck, drive all day and still be on my property."The old farmer from Kentucky said, "Yeah, I had a truck like that once too... "

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 23, 2021, 10:42:26 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 21, 2021, 11:38:35 pmThose temperatures I can only find inside my fridge. Living in such conditions for me is inconceivable.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 02:20:03 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 23, 2021, 07:44:31 pmWould you design your house for once in a lifetime event such as this?It is impossible to predict any future event...

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 03:16:32 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 24, 2021, 02:20:03 pmAnd even a $1.37bn brick and mortar house can be plagued by mold:“The palace was built using plasterboard attached to main walls and the mould appeared between the concrete walls and plasterboard.A source close to the Kremlin confirmed to BBC Russian that mould was a real problem: "the palace had been completed and was used for several years but then fungus appeared, accompanied by an unpleasant smell."https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56007943

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 04:04:13 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 24, 2021, 02:20:03 pmThe builders obviously predicted this and laid the foundation 20' from where it was meant to be.Some homeowner's policies don't cover damage from aerial objects. There used to be a time (I hope it's over) that blocks of blue ice would smash through people's roofs in the south of England. It was the contents of the chemical toilets from commercial aircraft.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 04:21:12 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pmYeah, not quite.Largest Ranch Australia: 3,340km2 (Anna Creek Station)Texas: 696,662km2Alaska: 1,717,856 km2

author: Sal Ammoniac
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 04:51:00 pm
content: Quote from: GlennSprigg on February 21, 2021, 12:25:59 pmWhen I was in Alaska several years ago, t-shirts comparing Alaska and Texas were popular:

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:16:47 pm
content: Quote from: bsfeechannel on February 23, 2021, 10:42:26 pmI'd much rather deal with -15C temperatures than 40C temperatures. It's a lot easier to warm up than it is to cool down.

author: dolbeau
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:28:01 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 23, 2021, 09:29:10 pmYes, and from those very pages Vancouver is 49°15′39″N, while Calais is 50°56′53″N, or almost 200km more northern for Calais. They may have similar climates, but at dissimilar latitudes.New York is 40.71'°N, technically south of Barcelona (41°23′N). Average low for January in New York is -2.8°C, for Barcelona 8.8°C. Snow is a common winter event in New York ; it's very rare in Barcelona. Very similar latitude, very dissimilar climate.Bordeaux is 44°50′N and has very extensive vineyards, famously. I could be missing on something, but I'm not aware of much wine shipping from Halifax (44°52′N) - it seems unlike Bordeaux, the climate doesn't agree with the vines...The east coast *is* colder than western Europe at similar latitudes.... though global warming might change this; anyone know a good spot to grow vines near Halifax in the future? :-)Edit: ... I should have remembered which coast Vancouver is on *before* posting :-) Can't find good latitude matches on the west coast (Bordeaux is at a similar latitude to Salem, Oregon, of which I confess I know nothing about...)

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:28:49 pm
content: Quote from: Sal Ammoniac on February 24, 2021, 04:51:00 pmDon’t get me started on comparing size of Siberia (just one region of Russia) to the size of Australia, Alaska and Texas combined

author: drussell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:43:02 pm
content: Quote from: dolbeau on February 24, 2021, 05:28:01 pmYoudorealize that there is a lot more to the overall climate in a given geographical area than justlatitude, right?!

author: drussell
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:48:59 pm
content: Quote from: dolbeau on February 24, 2021, 05:28:01 pmActually, Nova Scotia is one of the more prolific wine producing regions in Canada...

author: dolbeau
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 05:56:42 pm
content: Quote from: drussell on February 24, 2021, 05:43:02 pmPresumably I do, as that was the point I was making by then showing very different climates at the same latitude :-)I probably over-trimmed the post I was answering to. Canada *is* a cold country compared to European country of similar latitudes, and the Gulf Stream certainly has a part in that. The Kuroshio Current plays a similar role on the west coast, as mentioned by another poster.

author: Howardlong
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 06:06:15 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on February 21, 2021, 10:31:17 pmSlightly OT, but office buildings in high rent areas can barely last 40 years here in London before being levelled and completely rebuilt. Even old historically significant buildings aren't always protected, the modus operandi of the landlord is to leave the building empty in a dilapidated state until it's so unsafe they manage to get permission to level it and redevelop. I've lost count of the number of apparently perfectly serviceable buildings I've worked in over the years that just aren't there any more, replaced by designs with even more gleaming glass. The browns of the 70s and 80s are being pushed out by the greys with floor to ceiling shininess. As a result, much of London is a permanent building site.Oh, and then there's always this way to achieve new build that's around the corner from me.https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54794723https://chelseasociety.org.uk/1790-house-collapses/

author: dolbeau
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 06:08:09 pm
content: Quote from: drussell on February 24, 2021, 05:48:59 pmWell, you learn something new every day. Wine and Frenchmen... we think we know everything and unsurprisingly it turns out we don't :-)And looking at the Wines of Nova Scotia website (could have checked *that* before posting...), they're trying for Pinot Noir as well. Kinda intrigued I must say. Not that any shops here will carry any of it for me to try (if you want to meet an angry french shopkeeper, ask for some New World wines in a french wine shop...).

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 07:16:38 pm
content: Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 23, 2021, 10:08:11 pmLabrador is on the east cost of a large land mass, so it will be colder, than the same parallel on the other side of the Atlantic. Sakhalin island on the east coast of Russia is much colder, than Cambridge, even though it's much further south, on 46° parallel.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk#Geography_and_climateThe Gulf Stream provides very little heat to Western Europe. The wind transports much more heat energy from the equator, to Europe, than the Gulf Stream. Here's a link to an article which explains it quite well.http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/Quote from: dolbeau on February 24, 2021, 05:28:01 pmCalais and Vancouver are on similar latitudes: 200km hardly makes any difference to the annual average temperature.QuoteNo global warming won't change it. Western Europe will always be warmer, than Eastern North America.QuoteI'm not saying that the west coast of North America has exactly the same climate, as Europe. It doesn't, but it's much more similar to Europe, temperature wise, than Eastern Canada, because it's downwind of a large ocean. The arrangement of landmasses, mountains and sea surface temperatures make a difference to both rainfall and temperature, but not so much as being downwind of a large ocean vs a continent.Another example is Quimper, Northwestern France and Seattle. Granted, they're not exactly at the same latitude and don't have exactly the same temperatures, but they're both much warmer than Eastern North America and East Asia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quimper#Climatehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#ClimateHere's a post, based on the article I linked to above, with some pictures. Note that the North Atlantic current misses most of the UK and goes up to Iceland and Norway.https://all-geo.org/highlyallochthonous/2012/06/what-do-you-mean-the-gulf-stream-doesnt-keep-europe-warm-how-even-scientists-are-afflicted-by-urban-myths/

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 08:02:05 pm
content: We can argue about weather, but we can't argue about latitude.I'm in the US but at the latitude of Algeria.That does have certain advantages for solar power compared to Finland.

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 08:12:46 pm
content: Quote from: drussell on February 24, 2021, 05:48:59 pmNo, not really, Ontario & BC account for 95% of Canadian wine production, Nova Scotia is a drop in the barrel by comparison, in 2015 there was only 256 ha of vineyard in NS.But back to comparison, while Halifax and Bordeaux are on the same latitude, you'd never get a 'Bordeaux Grape' (Cab Sav, Cab Franc, Merlot...) to grow in Nova Scotia. What NS produces (white wines) are much more akin to what germany and austria (not australia) produce.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 08:31:19 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 24, 2021, 07:16:38 pmThis has got me thinkingI used to live in Bristol - it was very wet a lot of the time. After a 2 year hiatus in Texas, I lived in Melbourn. I was struck by how different the weather was in the east of England compared to the west. I remember remarking that I hadn't used my windscreen wipers in nearly 3 months. The east of the country was also more prone to the bitter cold from Siberia.Most of the winter rains in the UK come from Atlantic weather systems which are usually former tropical depressions often carried north by the Gulf Stream/North Atlantic Current. The western British Isles is certainly heavily influenced by the Gulf Stream. And to illustrate the diversity of weather in England further, I grew up in Portsmouth. In the summer, there were frequent nightly thunderstorms that came from France. I don't think I recall a decent thunderstorm in Cambs. Of course, none compared to the daily 4pm monsters in Texas and the insane rapid temperature drop (15degC in 10 minutes one time).

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 09:21:06 pm
content: The thing that really controls our short term (1week - 1 month) weather is the tortuous path that the Jet Stream takes over the Atlantic. This flips up and down, roughly centred on the UK. If it flips North of the UK it pulls up hot / humid weather from Southern Europe and Africa (Saharan dust on the cars). If centred it tends to pull in medium temperature damp air from the Atlantic. If it flips down across northern Europe, then it pulls down Arctic air from Siberia.The direction and speed of the Jet Stream, you can get some fairly different weather in different parts of the UK - as JohnnyMalaria mentioned, wetter in the west, a tendency to be colder in the East, and thunderstorms being dragged up over the channel in the South (and particularly South East). Underneath all of this lies the long term effect of the warm water from the Gulf Stream running up the West coast, giving a tendency for warmer weather in Cornwall and the West coast in general (as far North as the West coast of Scotland.Whilst we don't get the massive excursions of some more extreme climates, we get lots of day to day, week to week variability which leads to the semi-myth that the British are always talking about the weather.Unfortunately the Jet Streamisbecoming more energetic and variable over time, leading to more unpredictable weather, more frequent flooding events, storms and occasionally some spectacularly short US - UK flight times.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 10:47:59 pm
content: It's been disproven a long time ago that the Gulf Stream is the main driver for mild European winters. The west of England is milder and wetter, than the east, because the west is closer to the Atlantic and the east is nearer to the continent. A similar pattern repeats over North America, from west to east.Yes, it's the jet stream which governs our weather. It's true it's affected by sea surface temperatures, but the correlation isn't direct. A warm North Atlantic doesn't necessarily mean milder winters for Europe. The temperature of the North Pacific, has a greater impact.Links to sea surfaces temperature anomalies, at the end of Novembers 2010 and 2015, which preceded the coldest and mildest Decembers ever recorded in the UK. The Atlantic was much warmer at the end of 2010, than 2015. The difference was the Pacific was much colder in 2010, especially the north.https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.11.29.2010.gifhttps://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2015/anomnight.11.30.2015.gifOf course there are many other factors. The weather has changed from cold in the first half of February, to near record breaking warm this week, because the jet stream has moved northwards, due to the North Atlantic oscillation flipping to the positive phase and now the wind is now coming from the Azores, rather than Svalbard. The sea surface temperatures haven't changed much and Gulf Stream didn't go way when it was cold and return now it's milder.

author: bsfeechannel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 11:04:23 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on February 24, 2021, 05:16:47 pmCan't agree more.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 24, 2021, 11:19:43 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 24, 2021, 10:47:59 pmNOAA seems quite convinced of the importance of the Gulf Stream:https://scijinks.gov/gulf-stream/And you can't really decouple the two:http://www.actforlibraries.org/jet-stream-gulf-stream-polar-shifts-and-climate-changes/

author: boffin
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 12:00:59 am
content: Quote from: dolbeau on February 24, 2021, 06:08:09 pmWine regions can be somewhat unexpected. The hottest temperatures in Canada, and the only largish region growing Bordeaux or GSM wines is the very southern end of the Okanagan Valley the towns of Penticton/Oliver/Osoyoos, temps reach 40C in the summer, and only get 15-30cm rain/year. Even getting 50km from the US border, the weather changes enough that from Penticton north, it's more Pinot Noir and white varietals.Someone else mentioned Salem Oregon, and from a wine point of view, many French producers purchased land in the area, feeling it was the only appropriate terroir for Burgundy, outside of Burgundy itself and the produce some very good Pinots along with quite excellent sparkling wine.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 12:50:31 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on February 24, 2021, 10:47:59 pmNot very similar, though:I do not know what is themaindriver, but I definitely would not claim the Gulf Stream is irrelevant. (Note, neither did Zero999; they just said it is not the main driver.) The average winter temperature difference between Nunavut, Canada; Southern Greenland; and Iceland, breaks the "east-west part of continent dictates it" assertion, as they are all surrounded by ocean.The main reason I am wary of any simple explanations, is thatMedieval Warm Periodoccurred, between c. 950 and 1100 Common Era. During this time, Vikings in (the southernmost tip of) Greenland had cattle, sheep, and goats, and only a quarter of their diet was seafood. By 1300, three quarters of their diet came from seal hunting, as livestock just couldn't handle the harsh winters. We do not know why it occurred: all we know is correlation, and can only guess (and try to simulate to ascertain) the causation.I grew up in Finland, north of the arctic circle (so about 6° further north), and for example potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, and onions grow just fine even at 330m above sea level there. (At the bottom of a couple of fell lakes, well above the treeline, there are still rather large tree trunks from the Medieval Warm Period, too.) So, it is not a small difference in winter temperatures; it is a clear difference that affects the entire biome.The exact circulation patterns in the North Atlantic are rather interesting,Finally, comparing to the 10°C July mean isotherm (red line),we can see that the summer mean temperature differs quite a bit from the winter mean temperatures in eastern Siberia and Alaska. This supports the reasoning for continental effect on the climate (continental winters being colder, summers hotter). However, the way Bering Sea summers are much colder than say Iceland clearly undermines that reasoning. In other words,simpletheories based only on the polar jet stream, or only on the Gulf Stream, are doomed to fail even a cursory examination.

author: JohnnyMalaria
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 01:30:07 am
content: And palm trees grow in Scotlandhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/6659301.stm

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 07:52:25 am
content: Was I the only one that saw this and went "WTF, it snows in TEXAS?!"Seriously, I did that, I had no idea.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 09:29:53 am
content: I got the picture that this is rare (as in once every couple of decades sort of thing), but not unprecedented.(And that media is being a bit clickbaity in their "record-setting" claims, as this is generally not breaking any "all-time" records, just the last two or three decades.)Even though these things are impossible to predict, we know the overall mechanism ofhowthey occur. The Wikipedia articles on thepolar vortex(which keeps cold arctic air "confined" when strong, and "leaks" cold air south when weak) andRossby waves(the polar jet stream being at the boundary of the polar vortex, and is a type of Rossby wave) describe the structure of the phenomenon, with the article on the (polar)jet streamproviding interesting information on the polar jet stream itself, like it being surprisingly high in the atmosphere, at 9 - 12 km high, basicallyabovethe cloud layers.Still, the complexity is in the details. For example, when a "droplet" of cold air "detaches" from the polar vortex, it is very difficult to predict where it will collide with warmer wetter air causing snowfall. Even in Finland, it is possible (but rare) that the very southernmost Finland hasmore snowthan the northernmost parts, almost 1000 km north.The funkiest region weather-wise in Finland is the 100 km or so north from theBothnian Bay, where the weather changes from "central Finland" to "northern Finland" (for geographical reasons). I take a roadtrip north-south across Finland a few times each year, and in this region, the difference/change in weather tends to be the biggest.The funkiest region weather/biome-wise in Fennoscandia, in my opinion, is the trip from Kilpisjärvi (in northwesternmost tip of Finland) northwest to Skibotn in Norway, on the coast of Arctic ocean; only some 50 km or so, but also dropping some 500m in altitude. The Finnish side is decidedly arctic, with few stunted trees and scattered shrubbery (actually dwarf birch, betula nana); with the Norwegian side, quickly tending to lush green forests. It's amazing in the late spring: like literally coming from wintery tundra to summer within the span of an hour. The Google Street View oftraversing E8 northwest towards Norwaycaptures some of it, in case you're into that sort of thing.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 25, 2021, 11:43:12 am
content: Quote from: EEVblog on February 25, 2021, 07:52:25 amWest Texas can be incredibly cold in certain areas. Amarillo in the far west of the state easily reaches sub-zero ºC during winter.Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 25, 2021, 09:29:53 amA bit?As for records, the1929 Blizzardin Texas was quite devastating, but a much more recentblizzard in 2015did not reach the international headlines as this one (maybe due to the political landscape and constant mud flinging to the other side?). We were not hit with snow as severe as in cities west from here, but I only remember the terrible completely off-season tornados that stroke houses not very far from where I live.Nationwide, the worst weather conditions were in 1880/1881:

author: unixb0y
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 01:46:19 am
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 21, 2021, 02:51:44 pmFrom when I was little, I remember we always shutting off the water of our garage in winter and reopening it in summer, it's kind of a no brainer if you know "its gonna get cold" to me tbh

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 06:27:46 am
content: Quote from: unixb0y on February 26, 2021, 01:46:19 amIf you live somewhere like I do where it predictably dips into freezing territory for significant periods of time over the winter then yes this is a no-brainer. If you live somewhere where freezing weather is rare then I can understand not thinking of it. If you live somewhere that has poisonous insects and snakes you'd probably think it a no brainer to check your shoes before putting them on, and check under the bed and in closets and such for snakes, but it wouldn't even occur to me unless someone mentioned it, it's not impossible to get those things here but it's exceptionally rare.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 09:10:09 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 26, 2021, 06:27:46 amAgreed; well put, too.Where I live, there are no poisonous insects (except perhaps bees and wasps, if you count those; any poisonous arachnids there are physically cannot bite humans) and the only poisonous animal is asp (which is only dangerous if you are allergic; a simple bee sting kit with antihistamine and epinephrine will counteract any bite); so the critters in Australia, especially arachnids, scare me.Then again, Puumala hemorrhagic fever is endemic here in bank voles. It is an orthohantavirus, spread mainly via powdered bank vole droppings (so for example when sweeping a hut where bank voles have nested or pooped in). Most Finns tend to have some sort of genetic protection against it, and only get high fever and temporary renal problems; kids rarely get any symptoms, and having had the infection once, you have a lifelong immunity against it – and about 5% of Finns havetoday, with most Finns having very little to no contact with bank voles. Because the virus also causes increased porosity/permittivity of blood vessels, it can be dangerous for some, but in any case the fatality rate is under 0.1%, so fatalities are exceedingly rare; statistically about one person per year.Yet, an Israeli researcher doing research on bank voles, died of Puumala virus in Finland in 2014.You can imagine the shitstorm the media whipped up about how dangerous it is.. completely disregarding the fact that it isn't dangerous to Finns because of our genetics. I bet that >99% of Finnish rodent researchers have had "vole fever" – as the virus is called here –, and just didn't realize how dangerous it can be to those without inherited genetic protection against it. (Inherited, because of relatively isolated Finnish genetics, and because in the times when most Finns lived in villages or forests a few hundred years ago, probably all children had it in childhood, and the genetic protection is such that it is usually symptomless or very mild when had as a child – AFAIK child mortality is exactly zero, no known cases at all –, and gives a lifelong immunity.)I bet the fellow researchers knew that, because even I was told about it as a kid in early eighties living out in the boonies. Perhaps they underestimated the risks, or more likely,it just never occurred to them. (I mean, the research station did have top notch protections: suits, breathing masks, well insulated test enclosures, and so on; they weren't negligent or careless, the research station is top notch. They just did not realize how dangerous it could be to someone without the same genetic heritage.)Because that's what we humans are like; we just aren't adept at dealing with issues that are likely to only occur once or twice in our lifetimes, or anything outside our immediate experience. So don't be too harsh; you and I make the same mistakes too.

author: unixb0y
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 10:20:33 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 26, 2021, 06:27:46 amThat’s actually a good point and a good comparison

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 11:37:09 am
content: OTOH if the insects are swarming and covering the path to your front gate, and you've seen a few inside your house, wouldn't you be more careful?Where I grew up, we might get a hard winter with snow lying for more than a day or two maybe once a decade. Most winters it would only get cold enough to occasionally find a skin of ice on any small containers or sheltered puddles of water open to the sky outside if you got up early enough. Even though those with northern roots in the family had moved south three or more generations earlier, we still knew to drain or otherwise protect anything vulnerable to frost damage if a significant freeze was forecast. I've had to deal with one burst pipe due to frost in 50 years, and it was actually a neighbor's one that was external and ineffectively insulated.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 09:59:36 pm
content: Typical of the weather here, last week everything was encased in ice, today we hit 83 F.

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 26, 2021, 10:10:51 pm
content: Quote from: Ian.M on February 26, 2021, 11:37:09 amThere's a difference between knowing that it's cold and knowing that several kinds of household pipes can burst if they freeze. Just like there's a difference between knowing that venomous critters exist in an area and knowing that some of them like to hide in dark places like shoes and in bedding. There's also a difference between "knowing" something and being cognizant of it during a generally stressful situation.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2021, 10:28:10 am
content: Quote from: james_s on February 24, 2021, 05:16:47 pm-15C is quite OK. You can heat with COP=2 to 3 with an ordinary heat pump, air-to-air or air-to-water. Moderately sized small family house can be practically insulated for some 3-5kW average heat consumption. You can still go outside and do normal outside stuff (which you can't do at +40degC) with enough clothes on no problem. I don't enjoy it; many do.At -30C, things start to get tricky. You are left with ground source heat pumps which are expensive to set up; or direct heating with electricity at COP=1; or burning fossil fuels. And you need 5-10kW of heat even for a very well insulated house. Additionally breathing the air hurts (or at least doesn't feel right) which you can't fight against with any amount and quality of clothing (this is highly personal though, some are fine; I'm not), so can't enjoy being outside. So it's similar to that of +40degC: you are locked inside, on the mercy of modern day life support systems, heating or cooling.I have an old house with some old plumbing. I have developed a habit that whenever I leave for a few days, I close the supply valve so that an old pipe won't burst, or if the pipes somehow freeze which is unlikely, the amount of damage is very limited (a few litres of water somewhere, vs. almost unlimited supply if allowed to flood for days).Note there are really unpredictable things you can't practically protect against; like a hurricane hitting your home with a flying car. Youcanbuild a 1" thick steel wall around your home and make it a bunker, but it's notpractical. But weather isstatistical. With statistics, you can also extrapolate, add error margins, so on... What's happening in Texas is not unpredictable; it's the opposite, it has been completely predictable, statistically speaking. No one can say when it happens, but it's highly probable itdoeshappen at least once within the lifetime of the buildings. Also, protecting pipework from freezing is not rocket science, it's not very expensive; it's completely practical. It's all about risk management. Save a bit here and there ignoring the "quite unlikely" events. Then you pay the price for doing that choice.Insulation pays off in reduced cooling bills in hot climates. It also helps when it's suddenly cold. Finally, insulation slows down the cooling significantly during power outage. Having most pipes run inside the insulated envelope of the house, and properly and carefully insulating any pipe lengths that go outside of the house is the key, and this isn't expensive. Underground, they are protected by the insulating soil layer; some half a meter is enough in an environment where the cool season is short. In an well insulated house, a day or two long power outage is not a disaster, and pipes won't burst.Crawl spaces are problematic for plumbing. If ventilated through openings and/or uninsulated, they become nearly as cold as the outside air. All pipework must be properly insulated.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2021, 02:45:22 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 10:28:10 amGeneralizations are always a problem. Everything is very relative to what you are used to and have equipment for. At -15°C you can't do anything outside unless you have proper shoes or gloves - otherwise, the cold will bite your fingers off. At 40°C you can have cold water, work almost naked and cool of every few minutes under a shade, but you can also have a terrible time with insulation.Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 10:28:10 amThe major problem is to retrofit houses built decades ago where insulation and efficiency concerns were never taken into consideration - this accounts for the vast majority of reaidences in the metroplex I live. Sure, I personally have the resources to pay up a decent contractor/engineer to analyze my house and propose a few methods to fight this, but I would imagine that not many will be able to do so - especially in a year where many lost their income.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2021, 03:41:11 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 27, 2021, 02:45:22 pmAs always, you should just prepare for the rare-yet-predictable events, especially when it is simple and not that expensive. So buy some clothes, gloves, shoes, all that winter gear. It doesn't need to be fancy, doesn't need to be trendy, and what's best, if you are in a normally warm climate, it sees so little use it lasts for half of your lifetime (as long as you give up about the idea of being trendy).I don't want to blame anyone not doing this. It's also the failure of the whole society that we spend our lives discussing about completely irrelevant matters such as Kim Kardashian's arse, yet forget about what's really important for our survival. Media could help people getinformationabout important matters, not just entertainment.QuoteYes, retrofitting more insulation only pays for itself when you do that during other maintenance requiring tearing down the walls anyway.This isn't a practical tip of any sort and probably unhelpful, just an observation: I don't understand why substandard houses were built a few decades ago. We had all the knowledge and understanding back then, as we do now. Somehow it seems human kind periodically loses the understanding of the most basic needs. Or just go outright crazy.For example, here, the authorities basically forced people to bury the wooden structures a few dozen cm under the ground level, inside cold and wet concrete, from approx. 1965 to approx. 1990 in a structure called "fake foundation", creating a completely man-made mold disaster which affects basically half of the buildings in Finland for no reason whatsoever except someone thought buildings look better if they look like they sunk half a meter into the ground. At the same time, said authorities required that roofs must have no angle, obviously a winning idea in a climate where it snows every winter. The practical implementation consisted of a few layers of asphalt shingles, a solution which would work in a warm climate,orwith a considerable roof angle, but with completely flat&level roof where water sits in pools, exposed to dozens of water freezing - melting cycles every winter, lasted for maybe one year then leaked into the completely unventilated roofing structures and insulation - where plastic film finally prevented the leak from being detected and spread the water everywhere.So even if you wanted to build properly (and normally! we always knew how to do it!), it was not allowed. Many of these buildings are in acceptable conditions thanks to a better-than-average soil properties (this is, by luck), but most are generating health issues as we speak. Why? No reason. 1970's to 1980's was some strange time; we live in a cold country and the oil crisis was just behind, yet people tore down and refurbished old, well engineered (70-80% efficiency) fire places (that were designed for heating), replacing them with decoration fire places with nearly 0%, in worst cases below 0% heating efficiency, because they were more "trendy" back then. Just like building with timber in wet sand.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2021, 04:54:38 pm
content: Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 03:41:11 pmI agree with you in principle, but the TCO starts to become prohibitive when you have a limited house space used by clothes that only need to be drawn every 4~5 years or so.Quote from: Siwastaja on February 27, 2021, 03:41:11 pmI don't either. Regarding foundation, whwre I live the typical construction here is built on a slab of concrete that "floats" on the soil. It would be somewhat self-leveling if it wasn't for the fact the soil has a pesky tendency of becoming porous when dry. That brings tremendous forces that crack the slab and cost thousands of dollars to fix. That or you keep dripping water all around your house year round, with the cavest that you may have accumulated moist that seeps through the slab.Builders don't give a crap to a problem that will take 15, 20 years to manifest itself.

author: Siwastaja
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 27, 2021, 05:43:55 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on February 27, 2021, 04:54:38 pmHere, the great idea that was followed (and forced) for over 30 years was: excavate some soil, maybe one foot deep. Pour some concrete here, so the top is still under the top soil. Leave placeholder gaps for all outside and inside walls; add styrofoam thermal insulation and then pour another layer of concrete on the top of that insulation, so that the top of this upper slab is on the ground level or an inch above it. Now fix some timber in the gaping canyons so that the wood lies directly on thelowerslab, which is cold and moist below the ground level. Build the walls on the top of this wet timber.Why do it like this? No one knows. Oh and the result looks so ugly that people ask why this building is lacking the foundation. The solution: create a decorative concrete "fake foundation" on the front of the building so it looks like the building is founded above ground, yet you can walk in through the cutout in this fake foundation. It was even explicitly calledfake, yet someone thought it's a good idea!

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2021, 07:58:11 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on February 25, 2021, 12:50:31 amThe basic pattern of warmer in the west and colder in the east prevails over north America and Eurasia. The main difference is the mild temperatures extend further west into Europe, than they do into North America. There are a few reasons for this. Europe is a peninsula, with inland seas, America has the Rocky Mountains, which block the prevailing mild westerlies, so they don't get so far inland. The Rockies also send the jet stream on a north-west, to south-east trajectory, which results in the generation of intense low pressure systems and an increase in strength, as it hits the Atlantic, on eastern seaboard. This intense jet stream powers across the Atlantic, delivering mild air into Europe.QuoteThey're surrounded by cold ocean and are downwind of the frozen Arctic ocean and continent. Greenland has a mountainous interior and cold air sinking and flowing to the exterior makes it extremely cold. The Russian Far East is also very cold, despite being a peninsular.QuoteI agree. I don't like simple explanations, which is why it makes no sense when people say Europe is mild because of the Gulf Stream. The reality is much more complex than that. Ocean currents play a role, but only a small part.QuoteYes, interesting how the North Atlantic current misses all but most Northern Europe. The cold currents around Greenland and Eastern Canada help to push the July 10°C isotherm further south, although that's not he only reason.QuoteThe pattern of colder on the east coasts fits the summer pattern quite well though:the Labrador Sea is pretty cold in summer.The atmospheric circulation patterns for January and July are very revealing. Note how the high and low pressure areas are influenced by the landmasses? In the northern hemisphere wind blows clockwise around high pressure and anti-clockwise around low pressure.In the northern winter, the strong Icelandic (polar) low, Bermuda (also often called the Azores high in Europe) (subtropical) and Siberian high help to push south-westerly winds over Eurasia. Areas to the east of the large landmasses experience a much colder climate because the polar lows deliver northerly winds. In North America, the pressure pattern is similar, but not exactly the same, which accounts for the differences in temperatures.In summer the areas of high pressure in the subtropics move northwards and the polar lows weaken, giving more settled weather. Areas of low pressure sit in the middle of the continents, bringing about the monsoons.Also note that there's very little land in the mid-latitudes in the southern hemisphere, so there's less blocking and the wind direction is just flat westerly.Here's the site I got the charts from. It has a lot more information about the global atmospheric circulation pattern.https://slideplayer.com/slide/677125/Quote from: JohnnyMalaria on February 24, 2021, 11:19:43 pmOn the other hand, there's a lot of new evidence to show the Gulf Stream doesn't have as much effect, as previously thought.https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=gulf+stream+mythI agree it's impossible to decouple the two, but noting the above about how the land & sea interface, govern the global air circulation patten, suggests it's not so important. I agree that if the Gulf stream changed, it would affect the European climate, I very much doubt it would plunge us into the freezer, as many scaremongers say. The land and sea won't move that much, so the basic atmospheric circulation pattern won't change drastically.

author: Renate
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 28, 2021, 08:04:50 pm
content: I see "Canadian high", but I don't see any "Rocky Mountain High".

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2021, 07:19:03 pm
content: Quote from: Renate on February 28, 2021, 08:04:50 pmWhat you mean by that statement?Mountains can block winds and affect the jet stream, if they're high enough. Another example of this is, the Himalayas block cold air from North Asia, preventing it from reaching South Asia, which is why such places have much milder winters, than southern Texas, which is on a similar parallel. It's also another reason why the US west coast doesn't experience the same level of extreme cold, as the south.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 23, 2021, 08:26:03 pm
content: Just an update I saw today... Quite good video.

author: mac.6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 24, 2021, 10:18:45 am
content: A blog post of NXP on Austin fabs impact:https://www.nxp.com/company/blog/through-the-storm-the-complex-process-of-restarting-a-semiconductor-facility:BL-RESTARTING-SEMICONDUCTOR-FACILITY