Winter Status Report

 

With the end of the horrible year called 2020, the arrival of 2021 was hailed to be a new beginning, when everything would get better. Well, you can put me on the list as not yet being convinced of that prediction!

 In North Texas, we are used to mid-February signs of spring. Tree buds were swelling, early flowers were beginning to bloom, and resident birds were quarrelling over potential nesting sites and serenading their chosen mate. Even purple martins began arriving from their wintering grounds a week earlier than usual. I guess they believed the claims about global warming and didn’t want to miss out.

Well, as Gomer Pyle used to say,” Surprise! Surprise!”. Weather forecasters last week had been making dire predictions about extreme changes coming soon, and they were dead-on accurate for once. Saint Valentine’s Day arrived with a brisk north wind, plunging temperatures, and snow. That wasn’t really unusual, but the following day winter hit without mercy. By morning it was 9*F, with drifting snow, and by the next day it was a record-breaking -4*F! I had seen +9* a couple of time in my 25 years in Texas, but the last time it had been this cold was in the 1940s.

As an old-timer raised on a prairie farm near the Canadian border, I prepared for winter storms by making sure I had full gas tanks, a freshly filled propane tank, plenty of food, a tank of potable water, and even a propane powered 20kw, whole-house generator. What I wasn’t prepared for was the generator dying before I even got to start it, and then we lost commercial electricity and city water, and my geothermal HVAC began having problems once again!

We experienced rolling blackouts for days, with power-on cycles ranging from one-half to one-hour, and off for an hour or more at a time. The short runs were useless as far as heating since my geothermal HVAC computer requires twenty minutes to boot up to full output! So, we spent days and nights sitting in front of the gas fireplace, but I was thankful I insisted on a gas instead of the wood burning fireplace my wife wanted when we built the house.

Migrating birds suffered the most. A huge flock of Robins emptied the holly bushes of every berry, and then turned to a bag of bird seed I had strewn on the porch. They returned the favor by leaving a bucket-full of dropping for me to clean off.

We sat around the fireplace eating mostly warmups listening to AM radio, and reading real books for the better part of four days, and on two nights we piled on blankets as close to the fireplace as possible.

Yesterday the power came on long enough for the bread machine to finish a baking cycle! Nothing like warm, freshly baked bread in crappy winter weather. Oh, I almost forgot! The oven lower element burned out so I couldn’t have even hand-baked a loaf if the power had stayed on long enough.

So, we were just informed that the mail won’t be delivered for the fifth day in a row, as the big mail truck from Fort Worth can’t get to town. Roads are icy, most gas stations are out of gas, restaurants and grocery stores can’t get deliveries, and the temperatures are flirting with a mild thaw today.

However, this is Texas, so highs in the seventies are expected in a few days.

Today I arranged repair visits for my generator, microwave, and wall mounted oven.

The only good news is that the door latches I ordered last October have been received by the local supplier, and should be delivered sometime next week.