Snow Storm Stuff

Wow
What a classy Horn.

 

Now that some pressure has returned, i found a leak. Dang it
At least it is outside
On the north side of house -- the pipe is well insulated and i covered the bib with an additional cover, and dripped the line
Busted anyway

 

And smart to pick tacos!

 

What's next -- a plague of millions upon millions of frogs...?

 

There is going to be a bunch of dead fish in the Bays

 

Well, hopefully the Redfish and Speckled Trout population do ok. Of course, they eat smaller bait fish, so if one smaller/bait fish population falls off I guess many fish populations will fall off. Seems like the fish would just swim out to deeper water until things warm up...

 

A couple of the more recent ones

• 1983 — The Christmas Freeze, which set air temperature records across Texas, plunged coastal surface water temperatures from 60-64 degrees ahead of the front to 35 degrees in less than 8 hours.

Temperature remained below freezing in Port Arthur for 77 consecutive hours. Ice rimmed every Texas bay. On Trinity Bay, a 4-inch-thick sheet of ice extended almost 500 yards from shore. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department conducted intense, systematic and detailed monitoring of the freeze’s impacts. The estimated death toll: 14 million fish.

• 1989 — Two freezes — Feb. 3-6 and Dec. 22-24 — killed an estimated 17 million finfish.

The February freeze hit the upper and lower Laguna Madre hardest, but caused localized fish kills along the length of the Texas coast. TPWD estimated 11.3 million finfish killed.

The December freeze set air temperature records across the states. Brownsville saw 16 degrees, and temperatures fell to single digits along the upper coast. Houston set a record with 7 degrees.

Texas bays lost an estimated 6 million fish to the December 1989 freeze. The toll would have been much higher, but the February freeze had already stripped the bays of a large portion of their fish populations.​

from Shannon Tompkins

 

I fixed my own leak today
Well, I cut out the bad and then plugged that line.
Still need a plumber to replace what I cut out.
But at least I was able to turn water back on, and so far at least, no other leaks. Pressure is still low but no more buckets of pool water just to flush the toilet! So I call that a major victory. I will be popular (for the next 30m at least)

Lowe's was packed, as you might imagine
The plumbing aisles are blocked off at both ends, with a security guy only letting in so many at a time
And coming back the line for Church's Chicken was 3 blocks long
It's a crazy world

 

We are still getting rolling blackouts, as of Friday 2:10 pm
Kind of weird

 

Took my first shower in 5 days

Was good

 

Sark and his wife donated 500 meals today for those in need in the Austin community.

Really like this guy.

 

Pinkerton is a UT guy

 

So it’s balmy shorts and t-shirt weather yesterday and today in DFW.

Now that’s what I call climate change!

 

You ain't kiddin' - volunteered at a vaccine hub yesterday and was outside all day. Weather felt great but as I started to sweat a bit on the asphalt I thought to myself how crazy it was we were almost 70 degrees colder a week ago.

 

I did see footage of a fish kill after the freeze, don't know exactly where it was taken but I saw hundreds of dead trout. The guy didn't walk that far filming. This could be very bad.

 

Heard on an AM outdoor show last weekend the shallow water fish in the gulf were decimated. Also fresh water mullet ( I think) which are feeder fish all died off which means no food for larger fresh water fish. They'll start feeding on each other. Life is good above water, but it's just getting worse below.

 

Everything goes in cycles. Mullet and feeder fish populations will return soon.

 

Of course, but this isn't a cycle. There will be a bounce back period that could take a couple years.

I also heard we lost about 70% of our exotics population like black bucks and Axis. The state director of exotic game was on an outdoor show yesterday. He said they sent a survey out to the ranchers and so far that's about the average. A breeder in Bastrop lost almost $2M of his stock.

 

How it’s going:
If you guys need to come to Cherokee county to do some laundry pm me.

 

Bubba,

Thank you for relaying the warning. I spoke yesterday to relatives in Oklahoma who were concerned about us. I tried to explain to them that our circumstances were different than theirs. They can't understand that "no oven" doesn't mean that I won't be gathering wood for the stove. and that "washing clothes" doesn't mean going down to the creek in the heat and beating them on rocks.

 

It's as if spending 30 billion dollars on renewables instead of more reliable sources was not a good idea for us, especially when combined with a population explosion.

 

Okies are having kids left and right. Don't tell me there's no population explosion here.

 

Dude, you have a paltry 4 million people in your state. We've grown that in 10 years time. Yes, we've grown Oklahoma in a decade.

 

There's a reason why the two biggest population states (California and Texas) are having these energy problems. Even an Okie can figure it out.

 

Oklahoma is growing by 10-20k people a year. Oklahoma Population 1900-2020

Texas is growing 300k to 400k a year. There's no comparison. Texas Population 1900-2020

 

Personally, I have no idea how we're going to be able to handle this when we reach 35 or 40 million.