I was in New Orleans the past two weeks. On Friday it was 39F in the morning and people were dressed like it was the end of January around here.
I was only wearing a flannel shirt and got several comment's on how I must be freezing. This was about one in the afternoon when it was in the mid fifty's; I thought the weather was great.
I was only wearing a flannel shirt and got several comment's on how I must be freezing. This was about one in the afternoon when it was in the mid fifty's; I thought the weather was great.
It is so poor that I wouldn't want the audio and climate controls to be mutually exclusive. Those tasks seem to be different.
What a score. Just when Vancouver is going through the throngs of winter before it's even winter, I was walking the doggy, and came upon a most unusual pile of snow. Turns out it was a pile of salt, I'm guessing an overspill from one of them there salting trucks. Two wheelbarrows worth. Awfully handy at a time when the city has run out of salt for the consumer. My back may not be happy but the Strata sure is. 
I don't know if this has been posted in this thread before, but this site has kept me occupied for hours:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic
(Make sure you drag to your location)
If you go into the settings you can view just about anything. I love watching the wind through different layers of the atmosphere (or maybe the atma-sphere around me) during a Midwestern thunderstorm.
Phil
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic
(Make sure you drag to your location)
If you go into the settings you can view just about anything. I love watching the wind through different layers of the atmosphere (or maybe the atma-sphere around me) during a Midwestern thunderstorm.
Phil
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The temp here has been rather mild, waffling on either side of freezing by a degree of two for most of the day. Unfortunately there has been some form of precipitation falling from the sky all day and it is still coming. The crud on the ground is a mixture of mud, ice and snow. Most of the local roads have been shut down for an hour of two at a time several times today due to ice.
I guess I'm still a Florida boy on the inside, because I get weird looks and comments for shoveling snow in flip flops and a T-shirt. I did have to get some flip flops with serious tread on the bottom to avoid leaving butt prints in the snow. One of Sherri's relatives, an 80 year old woman, was not so lucky. She slipped off the concrete porch of her house and broker her arm.
As this storm system pushes through there is some serious cold behind it. We could see 0 degrees F on Thursday. Odds are my Honda will not start.......4 year old Walmart battery. It was sluggish early this morning at 24 F.
I guess I'm still a Florida boy on the inside, because I get weird looks and comments for shoveling snow in flip flops and a T-shirt. I did have to get some flip flops with serious tread on the bottom to avoid leaving butt prints in the snow. One of Sherri's relatives, an 80 year old woman, was not so lucky. She slipped off the concrete porch of her house and broker her arm.
As this storm system pushes through there is some serious cold behind it. We could see 0 degrees F on Thursday. Odds are my Honda will not start.......4 year old Walmart battery. It was sluggish early this morning at 24 F.
Cal, you make us scavengers mighty proud.
Number of years ago, the entire nation here ran out of salt due to endless alternate thawing and freezing.
Over 6'' of snow or temperatures under zero degrees Fahrenheit is very rare in these parts, a merry-go-round around freezing point isn't.
I haul a number of 50lb bags of salt from home depot every year before the thermometer hits party time.
My old '92 Accord actually started better in the winter. I miss that car, I got rid of it three years ago and still regret it.
A tip for cold batteries, and I know this seems counter-intuitive, but if you run your car's headlights for a minute, and then turn them off, the engine will have less trouble turning over.
George, you may be able to dispel this for me, but my EE professor used to swear by this. He said running the headlights ((55w*2=110w/13.7v=8A) for a bit would warm up the battery enough to lower the internal resistance. I've done it every time since and it seems to work for me, unless the battery is truly shot.
Get yourself a charger and give the battery a good top up once a month in the winter or so - the battery will last much longer, and the car will give you less trouble.
Mostly driving short trips in the winter is not good for the battery.
Johan-Kr
I don't know, it sounds plausible for some batteries. I have noted that sometimes on no start days if I come back 5 or 10 minutes later it will start. Possibly the same effect.
I have noticed that shaking or vibrating the battery helps too. It seems that hydrogen bubbles may displace the liquid over a significant part of the plate surface. A couple of smacks with the butt of a hammer might be all it needs.
I have two old school (transformer and diodes) battery chargers. One is rated for 6 amps, the other is a one amp "battery minder." I will connect the 1 amp charger to the car overnight when the temp goes into the single digit (F) or below range. That has worked so far except for a -12 F (-24C) day two years ago. It did start about 15 minutes later. There were no non start days last year, but it never got below 0 F last year.
The battery in my Honda has been run down to near zero twice. That is bad for a car battery not designed for "deep cycle use" and is partly to blame for the lack of capacity. Note that an uncharged battery will freeze, while a fully charged battery should not.
A trickle charger can add a bit of warmth to the battery and may be what helps it start on those really cold days. The "1 amp" minder draws about 10 watts according to my KillaWatt meter. I assume most of that makes it to the battery.
I had one of those fancy digital battery chargers. It told me that the batteries in both cars were defective and refused to charge them. The open circuit terminal voltage is too low. I returned the charger for a refund.
24F when I woke up, 22F when I left the house about an hour later. I took my wife's car. It needed gas. The fuel hatch was frozen shut.
Tomorrow morning will be much colder. Somewhere between 0 and 10F depending on who you listen to.
There's something about the West Coast that makes even 0c seem colder than this side of Canada in my experience so far. I used to think it was the humidity, but I often notice that the humidity is around the same as it is here on the Atlantic coast.. Nevertheless living in and around Victoria from birth until April 2009, I had never experienced a real deep cold Canadian type winter until I came here.. Like where people have ice fishing shacks and ice hockey rinks out on the ocean inlets and in bays and such, as the ocean freezes over. You also can see people snowmobiling right down the center of pretty big rivers, and ice fishing shacks on them also etc..
But in saying all that, on the West Coast or at least around Victoria, you get that in your bones type chill at a way warmer of a temp than here. I remember many times outdoors working at 0c to maybe -8c and you'd want to pretty much drain all the hot water in the shower to get that chill out when you got home.. The only difference I guess is here you can get that scary cold that I've never experienced in Victoria, when the temps and windchill really drops down.. Like where you feel your nose hairs in the same way as if you breathed in an oil based paint mist, except it's just the super cold air sticking them together. And you can go outside and in a very short time you feel the tip of your nose and ear lobes getting super cold, fingers and toes and such.. Either way both places can have very deadly cold, and you really need to be prepared for winter here comparably, and you learn some things that you never had to deal with back in Vic during winter etc..
Still though -10c on the West Coast if I had to guesstimate is probably comparable to our -16c/-18c here give or take depending on wind and such.. Pretty darn tootin cold in both places at those temps!
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