February 26, 2023
"Mrs. Space, 68… weighs just over 80 pounds, making it difficult for her to get warm."
"She and her husband, Thomas, watched as the thermometer in their home dipped into the low 60s. When Ms. Space started having headaches and shortness of breath, the two decided it was time to leave.... The Spaces tried to call hotels in the area, but many were sold out and available rooms were too expensive. Mr. Space found the American Red Cross shelter in Kalamazoo, so the couple packed what they needed from their home and spent the night there on Friday evening. 'It was almost a blessing, just to be able to walk in here and be given a cot,' she said."
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I went through two week long outages in Connecticut in 2011- one from a hurricane in late August/early Setember, and again 2 months later from a early Fall snowstorm.
Laundered, intermittent Green power with renewable benefits. It's Michigan, planned parent/hood?
Tudor Dixon Retweeted
@Outkick
500,000 Michiganders are still without power after the ice storm.
Jim Harbaugh is out picking up fallen trees with police.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is dancing at musicals while her residents are trapped without power.
https://twitter.com/Outkick/status/1629267429745385472?cxt=HHwWgICzoYuGqZwtAAAA
Just drove down Woodward through Royal Oak (Oakland County suburbs of Detroit). One of the main intersections on Woodward, and the stores and restaurants surrounding are still without power, and have been since Wednesday.
I'm not going to question other people's experience of cold. I weigh a lot more than 80 pounds (though I am not overweight), but we keep the house at 62° degrees in the winter on purpose, and let it go much lower at night — for our health and well-being. I can't imagine relocating to a shelter unless the temperature fell below 40 or so.
But there's a big psychological difference between setting your thermostat to 62 and knowing you can change it whenever you want and seeing the thermometer reading 62 and knowing you have no way to keep it from sinking lower and lower.
But I think our first priority would be keeping the house from getting damaged by frozen pipes. I think we could keep physically warm enough inside for the entire winter without heat. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I'd be loath to leave our house.
Whitmer is having fun...
https://www.lucianne.com/2023/02/25/this_is_the_left_whitmer_enjoys_an_evening_out_while_700000_michiganders_freeze_without_power_103315.html
So who cares?
Who cares...
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2023/02/25/officials-ohio-train-wreck-waste-headed-to-wayne-county-halted/69942874007/
a deal is a deal.
Put that near your Lake Mendota!
"it’s the second blackout in months"
Good practice for what's coming. Get used to it. No more temp privilege.
I have an acquaintance who is quite eccentric, but a very sweet woman, and she lives alone without heat well north of Albany, NY, and has for years.
Although in the south, we do occasionally have winter storms that bring power outages. We have made alternative plans to deal with those rare times by buying a couple of small kerosene heaters. When a serious winter storm or extreme cold is expected, we go buy a few gallons of kerosene. I'm not a great fan of the smell, so we make sure to keep a small fan circulating air and allow for a little ventilation. I'd rather put up with the smell and keep it reasonably warm than sit here miserable in the cold, or go to a strange place, where I'm even more uncomfortable.
After four days without heat in ice-storm weather, that house is likely to be a lot colder than 60 degrees. I suspect they may just not understand that that's where their thermostat bottoms out.
I hope those with EVs had enough spare battery to make it to warming centers.
The actual temperature is higher than the "feels like" temperature in convection corridors. Bundle up for a lower bill and better health. Insulate the pipes in preparation for cold days and nights to come.
They voted for Whitmer. I didn’t. Michigan and Minnesota are dysfunctional states, and Wisconsin wants to join them.
have they banned charging EV's for the duration?
When they outlaw natural gas and coal and wood heat, this is what you get. The all electric government imposed freezing genocide.
The lifestyle of the Siberians can be instructive. They drain their plumbing before the winter starts and rely on buckets for potable water and outdoor privies during the cold months. Traditional Siberian tribesmen, such as the Yukagir and the Chukchi, often live in a tent erected within a larger tent, creating a cramped and cozy but stuffy home where an open flame is a possibly deadly hazard. Consequently, they typically cook and light their tents with a single lamp fueled with a lump of caribou fat.
Is Ms. Whitmer living without power? No. And the governor's mansion in Ann Arbor has a 100-kilowatt Kohler standby generator. Carbon footprint be damned, the elite must live the elite lifestyle.
Western Washington State, 2006: It's called the Hannukah Eve Ice Storm of 2006 - 1.5 million people without power for close to a week.
The problem was the transmission lines coming across the Cascades from the Columbia River dams - they were toppled and couldn't be reached - steep slopes, tress downs. Unless a building had back-up power (like a hospital), everything was shut down, including most hotels and restaurants. Some of the PUDs that use coal were able to bounce back w/in a couple of days once trees were removed and lines restored.
We have a wood stove, so we were able to keep our family room moderately warm (~58degrees). but cell phones were dead w/in a few days an no place to charge them. Gas stations couldn't operate. We are on a well for our water - so no showers or flushing toilets.
BTW, the homes that use natural gas could at least stay warm, have warm showers and cook food.
When ever I am tempted to whine about being cold, I think of you people who actually do live in cold weather.
When I feel it is too hot, I think of friends in Phoenix.
You guys way tougher than us bay area Californicators.
But I think our first priority would be keeping the house from getting damaged by frozen pipes. I think we could keep physically warm enough inside for the entire winter without heat. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but I'd be loath to leave our house.
I remember seeing an article about a house that used a Canadian method of insulation. It was in "Fine Homebuilding" and the house was in Vermont. All the exterior walls were framed in two layers with a foot between them. The space was filled with insulation. The windows, of course, were inset the depth of the double walls. The house was said to be heated only by the waste heat from appliances. I don't recall the details of ventilation.
We live in southeastern Michigan. Lost power Wednesday evening; it came back Friday night, but then went out again Saturday afternoon. We heard they had to turn it off again to fix other areas and keep the grid in balance. House is probably in the 40s, but I don’t have a thermometer. The least affected is our dog, who bundles up with us on the bed. I envy people with a fireplace or a generator. I remember people in Syria and Ukraine who have it far worse; I pray for them and count my blessings.
Back in 1994 we had an ice storm in Southern MD that had our house out of power for a week. We had no heat other than a wood fireplace that probably sucked more warm air out of the house than it replaced with heat, though we did sleep in front of it in sleeping bags. The house dropped to 38 F. Frustratingly, the houses on the street below us had power back the same day, and those on wires, so we could look out our back window and see their lights, the difference between buried electrical lines.
Quaestor: "Is Ms. Whitmer living without power? No."
Tread carefully here as our LLR Chuck does not abide any criticisms of democraticals to go unchallenged and he is particularly protective of Whitmer and all of her far left policies.
There are great benefits in having a wood stove in the house.
Whitmer doesn't anything over our Oregon Democrat leadership, ugh. We had a terrible freeze in '21 and electricity was out 7-12 days in big parts of Portland area, including ours. We were lucky to have a wood stove, but otherwise nothing (no gas options). It was a week of invention in an 1830s kind of way.
I felt pretty smart with our various solutions, but sobered at our systems these days and how easily they break down.
I live out in the country on an old farmstead on a gravel road and have a 1,000 gallon LP tank which I fill up each summer when gas is the cheapest. But without electricity the gas furnace won't run, and I can't get water from my well without the electric powered water pump. But I have a wood-burning stove with tons of dry split wood to keep the house warm, and I can hand light the gas stove to cook food and melt snow. And since my dog is content to use the great outdoors as his toilet, well, I guess I can too in an emergency. No neighbors close by, so privacy is not an issue.
BTW, the homes that use natural gas could at least stay warm, have warm showers and cook food.
Only or red you have battery or generator power sufficient to power the thermostat on/off switch and to ignite the gas.
And to think that, not that long ago, I thought my Let's All Freeze To Death While Starving In The Dark Coalition was merely sarcastic hyperbole.
""Mrs. Space, 68… weighs just over 80 pounds, making it difficult for her to get warm.""
Obviously she needs a Space heater.
You can heat a house pretty well using a natural gas oven with the door open. No electricity required. Good idea to have a CO detector though.
It's called the Hannukah Eve Ice Storm of 2006
Small correction. It was a wind storm. Lost a huge hemlock on the back of our property as it fell across the creek.
We (south sound) were without power for only two days. Invested in a generator at the next opportunity. Prepared for natural disasters as well as man-made ones.
You can have my gas fireplace right after you pry it from my cold dead hands!!
We've had several ice storms, including the Hannukah Eve Ice Storm of 2006. One was in November about 15 years ago. The power at our house in NE Bellevue was out for about a week. We had plenty of blankets and coats, but after about 3 days, we had to find someplace that had power. We found a restaurant (Lil' Jon) near I-90 that had power. After warming up, we could go back to our house and wait out the power restoration.
Our house out in rural Snoqualmie has a 500-gal propane tank and a 22KW generator. We've had to use both several times since we moved in a the end of last November.
Old and slow said...
You can heat a house pretty well using a natural gas oven with the door open. No electricity required. Good idea to have a CO detector though.
2/26/23, 3:13 PM
We heated ours during Super Storm Sandy by keeping big pots of water boiling on our stove. We then used the hot water to wash up everyday. Why do you think they want to take away gas stoves. Can't control the masses when they can help themselves.
Could have been worse in our area--west Michigan. Seems you couldn't go ten miles out of our small town on secondary roads without seeing somebody--power company, tree service, etc.--taking down a tree or three along the power line easements, or along the roads nearby. For at least two years.
cf,
Not only in Portland; I'm in Salem, and our power was also out for a week. (Pretty much to the hour, as it happens.) We stuck it out for four miserable days and then departed to a motel in Dallas (OR, not TX).
The larger damage was to our trees. One oak lost eleven large limbs. The other one was worse; it had a double trunk, and one half split off and demolished our lower deck, coming within six inches of breaking the bottom-story windows as well. It was the same everywhere in Salem -- thousands of trees were down.
The only source of heat we had was our NG fireplace, so at night we turned it up and slept on the floor nearby.
I've been without power in the cold for a week when I lived in Maryland after a snowstorm. A gas stove and fireplace mitigated it well enough. We were without power for a week here in SWFL after Hurricane Ian, the potential problem wasn't cold, but heat. Fortunately the hurricane brought in cool low humidity weather. And again, gas saved the day, al la a gas grill. The current administration seems intent on banning gas and gas devices, I have reason to believe they want us to die one disaster at a time.
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