Hattip to my sister-in-law Joanna. Midwest Cold to Texas Cold is as Texas Hot to Midwest Hot.
MidWest Cold and Texas Cold
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
For me, below 60 degrees in South West Florida is like 10 degrees in Detroit. I sympathize with the Texas folks..
We humans are amazingly adaptable. Tent camp in VT with a foot of snow and 32F will feel balmy by the end of the weekend.
Would I shovel snow in a tee shirt and shorts if I lived in the South?
Probably not. Less the neighbors think I’m crazy.
I’m at -13F right now. About to shovel snow then walk to a local coffee shop.
so, where is global warming when you need it?
Shivering in the corner!
One of my peeps lives in Galveston County at the southern extremity of the tract development around Houston. The % of households in Galveston County which are w/o power has in the last day declined – from 90% to 70%. He has no running water because the pipes are frozen, no heat, and his wife’s in the hospital gravely ill. (AFAICT, the hospital has a back up generator). Things in Harris County to the north are better, but 1/4 of the households are still without power).
The power situation in this state is an absolute disgrace. Folks here may recall me posting about my youth in NW Illinois and that we still spend most of every summer there to escape that Texas heat Don mentioned. Subzero cold was normal every January and February, often for a week or more at a time. We just dealt with it. But I don’t ever remember power failures occurring on a widespread basis. Sure, the occasional tree falling from the weight of snow and ice would take out power in certain places from time to time, but even in the worst weather it was restored within hours. And there most certainly was never an overall failure of power plants due to “frozen instruments”, which is the explanation currently being fed to the shivering masses in Texas, I suspect to deflect from the complete failure of “wind power” due to iced-over propellers. That “frozen instruments” story is one as to which we eagerly await further explanation, as it smells like political horse-hockey to me and to many others. Whatever the cause, the fact that “rolling blackouts” are necessary is completely inexcusable. This is an unusual event, to be sure, but ice, snow, and very cold temperatures are not unheard of here and should have been anticipated. Instead, we have an electrical “reliability” bureaucracy with grotesquely high-salaried officers who have publicly postured for years about changing over from coal to wind as a power source, and we now know the extent of their abject failure in preparing for emergencies. The entire upper management roster of “ERCOT” needs to be summarily dismissed. But it won’t be.
By the grace of God, we ended up in a house three blocks from a fire station, and apparently we are on the same branch of the grid as they are, since “critical facilities” are exempt from the rolling blackouts, and we (so far) have been spared any power outages. We pray for those not so fortunate. And for accounting of the failures when this is finally over.
Instead, we have an electrical “reliability” bureaucracy with grotesquely high-salaried officers who have publicly postured for years about changing over from coal to wind as a power source, and we now know the extent of their abject failure in preparing for emergencies.
Bingo.
If we went nuclear, then there wouldn’t be these problems with frozen piles of coal and trains unable to run to deliver replacement coal due to frozen rails, frozen natural gas and oil pipe lines, frozen wind turbine blades and iced snowed over solar cells. Thorium, uranium and plutonium don’t care about the weather. Refueling a nuke is once every 2 years in spring or autumn, then the nuke if independent. We deserve the consequences of our decisions.
Consequences: 2000 MWe from Indian Point 2 & 3 in NYS will be gone permanently. Same with Illinois’ Byron and Dresden. And Texas stopped building nukes after Comanche Peak and South Texas Project. They went wind and solar. Sow the whirlwind, reap the whirlwind.
LQC, exactly. How long will it take to overcome the irrational fear of nuclear power?
Regarding the current Texas situation, there’s a good review today on Lawrence Person’s Battleswarm Blog. Recommended.
If we wake from our irrational fears of COVID there could be an opportunity.
(“If”)
I’ve had a lifelong belief that we are actually getting colder here in the Midwest. Maybe it’s just me getting to middle age and having absolutely no tolerance for this garbage anymore.
– The number of record lows we reach every year far exceeds the number of record highs, with most years never reaching record highs.
– If you compare any date’s record high with its record low, the record high is often much further back in history than the record low, the latter of which is often quite recent.
– Record snowfalls the last decade throughout the Midwest. Record snowfalls in months like October, November and April in many locations.
– Winter just DRAGS on forever. Iowa weather (where I am now) is reminiscent of Wisconsin weather: the daily temp in April-May is often 20+ below the daily “average.” When exactly do these “averages” get recalculated?
Every time I hear someone talk about global warming, it reminds me of the Theodore Dalrymple (sp) quote about propaganda: the purpose is to humiliate you into disbelieving your own eyes.
At a minimum, it seems to me like the Jet Stream is moving farther south historically. Obviously, environmentalists have no interest in anything that deviates from their agenda, so it won’t be researched anytime soon. Previously, it seemed to be moving south into Iowa. Now we’re talking about it moving back into the deep south ala the last ice age.
That was hysterical, especially the Midwest gal. She had that Fargo-accent down pat. LOL
I hope they do a sequel to this video with those same 2 ladies when July or August rolls around…
@Brian – I had heard some predictions that the sun was about to enter a minimum phase and we would see temperature drops around the world. Ironically some pointing this out were saying global warming might keep us from another ice age.
“I’ve had a lifelong belief that we are actually getting colder here in the Midwest.”
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According to the US Geologic Survey, we live in an Ice Age. https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/ice-ages-what-are-they-and-what-causes-them/
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I remember back in the 70s and early 80’s they were lamenting the fact that we were headed into an ice age. Guess it didn’t get cold fast enough for them, so they switched it to Global Warming, and now Global Climate Change.
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We cannot go nuclear fast enough.
Texas….
I was startled by a colleague swearing and cursing one day when the news said “massive engineering failure of electric transmission towers from the weight of record ice storms in the South… ”
He explained “I was on that project, it was the #$@! bean counters.. we argued for stronger towers.. but the bean counters denied our request,,, what are the odds of a ice storm here, they had argued… idiots!”
Hardening systems against freezing cold takes money; it’s a safe bet the bean counters argued against it.
What are the odds? If it can happen, it will happen, P(event)=1,, always,, always,, given enough time.
And if the systems were built in the last ten years, “global warming”.. would make any argument of sustained sub zero weather… impossible.
@DAVID WS: As “the story develops”, i.e., as facts come to light, it seems you are exactly right. Both the power bureaucrats and power plant management appear to have chosen not to spend the money necessary to protect the grid from extreme cold and winter precipitation. I am no fan of regulation, but this and the annual “pick your provider” follies we deal with here in TX are beginning to make me long for a return to the days of electricity rate regulation.
A friend just transferred to Del Rio, just in time for this cold.
The water treatment center is down from lack of power, so the city has no water and they got told yesterday to stop flushing toilets.
They did not have generators to deal with loss of power.
For water.
In the desert.
Del Rio had 10 inches of snow on Thursday. Former Gov. Rick Perry was on the tube and talked about getting more of the new nukes online. Texas has it’s own electrical grid. I’m sure there will be pressure for the state to join the federal grid. Texas does not want the regulation that goes with it.
The snow pic she sent on the 14th was pretty epic– but definitely didn’t show 10 inches, and it was the 17th when she was driven to complain that they had shut down the water plant two days prior and were now demanding the base stop using the toilets.
Just got my Internet back.
Yes, Texas wasn’t equipped for the Winter Storm Uri.
I lost power & water in the middle of the week.
I’m not complaining, but I understand what people are going through.
I used to work for a wind turbine company here in Texas. We knew if it wasn’t for the tax credits, none of the bat & bird killing wind mills would have been built in West Texas. Which by the way, many of which froze stiff, thus protecting bird & bats from being whacked.