Twenty degrees never felt as warm as it did this afternoon. It was 2:15 and I went outside; it was twenty degrees, but the sun was shining brightly and it actually felt warm. It was a much different sensation than at 7:30 this morning when it was minus 22 degrees!
It's just the latest in a stretch of extremely cold mornings, with no end in sight.
Thursday morning was minus 18; Wednesday was minus 19; and Tuesday was minus 7. Tuesday's high temp was the highest in the last four days at 26; the past three days the high has been 24.
And all of these mornings have been days when I worked overnight at the hotel, meaning I'm driving home when it's the absolute coldest, about 7:15 a.m.
I start my car early and go back inside to let it warm up, and going the few steps from the hotel to the car and from the car to the house isn't that bad, as long as I'm bundled up. But Wednesday was trash day, and in the three or four minutes it took me to roll the trash can to the curb, my face got so cold, I couldn't believe it happened that quickly. I was wearing gloves and a coat, of course, but my face was exposed.
We had to laugh last night when we watched the 10:00 news. The weather guy predicted Taos would have a low of minus 4 and it was already minus 12!
Someday Spring will come. Heck, someday it will get above freezing.
In the meantime, I'll go outside in the afternoon when the sun is shining and revel in the warmth of twenty degrees.
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Friday, January 4, 2013
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The Fun Continues
Day 3 of the natural gas “service disruption.” Service has been restored to Albuquerque, naturally, and it’s gradually being restored to parts of northern New Mexico, but it won’t be back on in Taos today, and maybe not tomorrow.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and it was colder inside the store than outside, at least outside in the sunshine. The deli part was closed and so was the seafood counter, but the rest of the store was fully stocked. Some of the produce looked a little “tired” so I bypassed the red bell peppers, but I got the essentials – milk, cat food, chicken, potatoes, etc.
It was strange to drive through town yesterday and see all the empty parking lots at restaurants. From the fast food places to the fancy restaurants and everything in between, they’re all closed because they use gas for cooking. I don’t know what the tourists are doing for food.
Fortunately (I guess), there aren’t that many tourists. The hotel where I work had 5 rooms filled last night (at first). We put a space heater in each of the rooms and those are the only space heaters we have. At 4:00 a.m. a man came in and wanted a room. Brian, the security guard, explained the situation to him (no heat, no hot water, and no more space heaters), but he wanted a room anyway; he’d been driving all day and night. Brian offered to provide an extra blanket from one of the other rooms and he was happy with that. Several people have called to cancel their reservations.
I stayed close to the space heater at the front desk as much as I could last night. It’s small (it sits on the counter), and can’t really put out that much heat. If I got more than two feet away from it, I started getting cold. I need to wear more layers tonight. It was such a relief to get home this morning to a warm house and crawl into a warm bed with two blankets and a comforter.
At least the weather is getting warmer, relatively speaking. The high today was 37; anything above freezing is warm. The low this morning was 5; anything above zero is very warm.
We’re supposed to get snow tonight and as I was writing this, Ron called me into the living room to see the forecast on the Weather Channel. High temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday will be in the single digits. Sigh.
I went to the grocery store yesterday and it was colder inside the store than outside, at least outside in the sunshine. The deli part was closed and so was the seafood counter, but the rest of the store was fully stocked. Some of the produce looked a little “tired” so I bypassed the red bell peppers, but I got the essentials – milk, cat food, chicken, potatoes, etc.
It was strange to drive through town yesterday and see all the empty parking lots at restaurants. From the fast food places to the fancy restaurants and everything in between, they’re all closed because they use gas for cooking. I don’t know what the tourists are doing for food.
Fortunately (I guess), there aren’t that many tourists. The hotel where I work had 5 rooms filled last night (at first). We put a space heater in each of the rooms and those are the only space heaters we have. At 4:00 a.m. a man came in and wanted a room. Brian, the security guard, explained the situation to him (no heat, no hot water, and no more space heaters), but he wanted a room anyway; he’d been driving all day and night. Brian offered to provide an extra blanket from one of the other rooms and he was happy with that. Several people have called to cancel their reservations.
I stayed close to the space heater at the front desk as much as I could last night. It’s small (it sits on the counter), and can’t really put out that much heat. If I got more than two feet away from it, I started getting cold. I need to wear more layers tonight. It was such a relief to get home this morning to a warm house and crawl into a warm bed with two blankets and a comforter.
At least the weather is getting warmer, relatively speaking. The high today was 37; anything above freezing is warm. The low this morning was 5; anything above zero is very warm.
We’re supposed to get snow tonight and as I was writing this, Ron called me into the living room to see the forecast on the Weather Channel. High temperatures on Tuesday and Wednesday will be in the single digits. Sigh.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Is It Spring Yet?
I sure hope that groundhog knew what he was talking about when he said it would be spring soon. Or is that only in Pennsylvania? I don’t know how he doesn’t see his shadow, with all those TV camera lights there.
I thought that last winter I was more than ready for spring, but that was nothing compared to this year. The last few days have been … indescribable, but I’ll try to describe them anyway.
Wednesday morning the low temperature was predicted to be minus ten, so when it turned out to be minus six instead, it was a pleasant surprise. Of course the high on Wednesday was only six above, so it’s all relative. The predicted low for Thursday morning was minus 20, but I was hoping that once again, the prediction would be wrong. But I knew we were in trouble when it was already zero at 6:00 p.m. One of the joys of our home weather station is that we can always know exactly how miserable we are. And at 7:00 a.m. on Thursday I was plenty miserable. The temperature was minus 26! That’s temperature, folks, not wind chill. I didn’t even look at the wind chill; the temperature was enough.
I did what any sane person would do. I let the dogs out to do their business, which they finished in record time, and I let them back in. Even Wolfie didn’t want to be out there very long. Then I went back to bed for another hour (one of the benefits of not having a full time job at the moment, and one of the benefits of Ron being in Albuquerque for a couple of days).
Around lunchtime, when the temperature was a balmy 19, I attempted to do a few errands, but my Jeep wouldn’t cooperate. It started up fine, but as soon as I took my foot off the gas, the engine shut down completely. It wasn’t the battery; the car started up fine and the radio stayed on even when the engine shut down. I tried it a couple more times later in the afternoon when the temperature soared to the high of 23, but got the same result. Around 4:30 or 5:00, when Ron called to say he was leaving Albuquerque to head back home, I told him about the car problems. He had the solution in the garage, of course (he stocks the garage the way I stock the freezer and the pantry). It’s a wonderful product called Heet; it’s a gas-line antifreeze. Following his instructions, I poured the bottle into the gas tank, then started the car and kept my foot on the gas pedal for 20 minutes, so the product could circulate and dissolve any possible water in the gas-line. Of course I should have put the stuff in before it went below zero those two nights, but I didn’t know. Now I know and I’ll never forget.
It turns out it’s a good thing I didn’t go to the grocery store at noon. It was a madhouse, with people clearing the shelves. There’s more going on than cold temperatures. There’s a serious disruption with the pipeline delivery of natural gas to all of New Mexico, but especially Northern New Mexico. We don’t have natural gas, something we’ve been lamenting all the years we’ve been here, but today we’re extremely grateful. New Mexico gets its natural gas from Texas (insert your favorite derogatory comment about Texas here) and because of rolling blackouts in Texas, the flow of natural gas has come to a near standstill. It could be four days or more before the gas is flowing again, and once it does, technicians will need to go to each home and business to do a relight. How long will that take? According to the Taos News, “Between Taos, Red River and Questa alone, the company estimates some 10,800 customers will be affected, especially in the freezing temperatures.” So people crowded to hardware stores to buy space heaters, and the electric company expressed fears that the electric grid would overload and fail, so people crowded to the grocery stores to buy bottled water because for many (us included on this one), no electricity means no water because pumping water up out of a well requires electricity. People were also stocking up on food. So going to the store would have been a nightmare. We were pretty well stocked up on food; my parents trained me well on that one. I filled up a couple of empty gallon jugs with water in case we did lose electricity. And I started the roast chicken and vegetables earlier than I’d planned to so it would be finished before everyone started cranking up their space heaters, endangering the power grid. Plus having the oven on would help warm up the house (I used the same excuse to bake brownies on Wednesday).
I’m actually writing this at 3:00 in the morning at my hotel job. We never lost power at home (at least it was still on when I left at 10:45). We have power at the hotel, but no heat. Apparently this place uses gas, not electricity or propane. So for the three rooms that are occupied (yes 3, out of 115), the guests have space heaters. And there’s a small, warm space heater on the counter next to me, but I have to turn it off every so often because the blowing noise is driving me nuts.
The low on Friday morning is supposed to be minus 12, which sounds pretty warm after minus 26. There’s something really wrong when minus 12 sounds warm!
I thought that last winter I was more than ready for spring, but that was nothing compared to this year. The last few days have been … indescribable, but I’ll try to describe them anyway.
Wednesday morning the low temperature was predicted to be minus ten, so when it turned out to be minus six instead, it was a pleasant surprise. Of course the high on Wednesday was only six above, so it’s all relative. The predicted low for Thursday morning was minus 20, but I was hoping that once again, the prediction would be wrong. But I knew we were in trouble when it was already zero at 6:00 p.m. One of the joys of our home weather station is that we can always know exactly how miserable we are. And at 7:00 a.m. on Thursday I was plenty miserable. The temperature was minus 26! That’s temperature, folks, not wind chill. I didn’t even look at the wind chill; the temperature was enough.
I did what any sane person would do. I let the dogs out to do their business, which they finished in record time, and I let them back in. Even Wolfie didn’t want to be out there very long. Then I went back to bed for another hour (one of the benefits of not having a full time job at the moment, and one of the benefits of Ron being in Albuquerque for a couple of days).
Around lunchtime, when the temperature was a balmy 19, I attempted to do a few errands, but my Jeep wouldn’t cooperate. It started up fine, but as soon as I took my foot off the gas, the engine shut down completely. It wasn’t the battery; the car started up fine and the radio stayed on even when the engine shut down. I tried it a couple more times later in the afternoon when the temperature soared to the high of 23, but got the same result. Around 4:30 or 5:00, when Ron called to say he was leaving Albuquerque to head back home, I told him about the car problems. He had the solution in the garage, of course (he stocks the garage the way I stock the freezer and the pantry). It’s a wonderful product called Heet; it’s a gas-line antifreeze. Following his instructions, I poured the bottle into the gas tank, then started the car and kept my foot on the gas pedal for 20 minutes, so the product could circulate and dissolve any possible water in the gas-line. Of course I should have put the stuff in before it went below zero those two nights, but I didn’t know. Now I know and I’ll never forget.
It turns out it’s a good thing I didn’t go to the grocery store at noon. It was a madhouse, with people clearing the shelves. There’s more going on than cold temperatures. There’s a serious disruption with the pipeline delivery of natural gas to all of New Mexico, but especially Northern New Mexico. We don’t have natural gas, something we’ve been lamenting all the years we’ve been here, but today we’re extremely grateful. New Mexico gets its natural gas from Texas (insert your favorite derogatory comment about Texas here) and because of rolling blackouts in Texas, the flow of natural gas has come to a near standstill. It could be four days or more before the gas is flowing again, and once it does, technicians will need to go to each home and business to do a relight. How long will that take? According to the Taos News, “Between Taos, Red River and Questa alone, the company estimates some 10,800 customers will be affected, especially in the freezing temperatures.” So people crowded to hardware stores to buy space heaters, and the electric company expressed fears that the electric grid would overload and fail, so people crowded to the grocery stores to buy bottled water because for many (us included on this one), no electricity means no water because pumping water up out of a well requires electricity. People were also stocking up on food. So going to the store would have been a nightmare. We were pretty well stocked up on food; my parents trained me well on that one. I filled up a couple of empty gallon jugs with water in case we did lose electricity. And I started the roast chicken and vegetables earlier than I’d planned to so it would be finished before everyone started cranking up their space heaters, endangering the power grid. Plus having the oven on would help warm up the house (I used the same excuse to bake brownies on Wednesday).
I’m actually writing this at 3:00 in the morning at my hotel job. We never lost power at home (at least it was still on when I left at 10:45). We have power at the hotel, but no heat. Apparently this place uses gas, not electricity or propane. So for the three rooms that are occupied (yes 3, out of 115), the guests have space heaters. And there’s a small, warm space heater on the counter next to me, but I have to turn it off every so often because the blowing noise is driving me nuts.
The low on Friday morning is supposed to be minus 12, which sounds pretty warm after minus 26. There’s something really wrong when minus 12 sounds warm!
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