Memory Freeze
(Nature • Climate)
A hard freeze is coming tonight, so they say, perhaps the coldest and hardest to hit these parts in a decade. Most of the stores are out of space heaters and (to my possible detriment) water pipe insulation, as residents batten down the hatches for three consecutive nights of temperatures in the low 20s.
I’ll drip water faucets and shield exposed pipes from the wind and probably be all right in that regard, but we’ll probably lose a fair amount of the big semi-tropical stuff planted around the place.
I covered the roots of a big Surinam cherry tree and a big red hibiscus that almost died in a late spring freeze two winters ago. But the Meyer lemon, Satsuma orange and the pomegranate trees are on their own. At least some will probably die, but they’re so new it won’t be that much work to replace them if they do, rather than put a lot of work into a possible lost cause. I have no idea what to expect of the bananas. Some of what we have came from neighbors’ stock that was more than 10 years old. The Raja Puri have come back after freezes at least down to 25.
The fuss over what passes for bad winter weather here is almost comical compared to any given winter a few states north, of course. I did my time up there and concluded enough was enough.
My most enduring bad-winter memory involves a blizzard through which I had to drive for 140 miles or so in the late ’70s, down to my ancient farmhouse on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in southern Ohio.
We were in the midst of a January thaw and the temperature had climbed to near 50 when I got in the car, but 75 miles later it had dropped to zero and snow was slashing past from the east, horizontally, tumbling the occasional tin shed roof across the highway. By the time we reached the county road that led to my dirt road, it was 28 below. Claws of thick ice rose up out of what had been puddles in the road. Other cars had splashed through, and the water just froze in place. The ice slashed through both my back tires, up on the sidewalls. By that time we were less than a mile from home so I just skated on the rims.
The house had lost power sometime during the storm. The electricity was back on when we walked in, but the coal furnace had to be restarted manually, so it was frigid inside. I looked over at a big aquarium and noticed that several of my fish were enclosed in a block of ice about two inches thick at the top of the tank.
By the next morning, thigh-high snow covered everything, and it would be well over a week before they got around with a plow to our backwoods roads. The weather stayed below 10 degrees much of the time, and the snow squeaked underfoot. Condensation from my breath froze my mustache solid each time I went outside.
The coal furnace wasn’t enough to keep that drafty old house comfortably warm in such weather, but our salvation was that we had a good wood-burning stove in the kitchen and a freezer in the basement. We obtained our water from a spring that bubbled up in a spring house out back, fed to the house by gravity. Foam insulation and electric heat tape was always in place in the winter, and we managed not to crack any pipes this time.
The house was, as I recall, built in the 1880s or so – before indoor plumbing. An outhouse remained on the property, and I remember the mental picture it created in my head to look inside and observe three toilet holes. You had to learn to coordinate the family’s poop breaks in order to stay warm in the winters. By the time we arrived on the scene, a semi-modern bathroom had been added downstairs. It was, however, the only room in the house built over what was now very frozen ground (while the rest of the house was above the basement). This meant that if you wanted to take a bath (and there was no shower) you had to run hot water only, and hope that the gravity-fed liquid would run fast enough to keep the water at least semi-warm by the time it was full. When you sat down, the bottom of the tub was still cold.
Early each morning for the next several days after the blizzard, I dressed myself in my best Nanuck outfit, got out the chainsaw and headed up in the wooded hills surrounding the place, hunting for old downed oak trees. Luckily there were many. I cut them into manageable pieces, then had to carry or drag the big wood chunks back downhill. By this time it could be almost noon. Then they all had to be split. Usually I ended up with a little more wood than we could consume in the stove in 24 hours.
I got into pretty good shape and enjoyed much of the outdoor pioneer lifestyle. Who needed Kroger? There was time for hunting between hauling wood, and the forest was full of fat rabbits and ruffed grouse. It was full of deer, too, but my ex-wife and I had reached an understanding whereby I would let the deer feed off of my corn in the summer and not shoot them as they pranced around during hunting season.
The dumb-ass half-drunk “hunters” from Canton would drive down and park on our road in season, and I’d spend mornings hunting them and shooing them off the property before they shot one of my dogs. I could never figure it out, but I swear not one of them ever walked more than 20 yards into the woods from the side of the road. But I digress.
After 10 or 12 days, we finally got our road plowed, but it was one of our neighbors from a few miles away who did the plowing. He hadn’t been able to get to us with his tractor until the county got the “main” road cleared. Then I had to deal with two flat tires on the car, getting rid of an old aquarium, getting supplies and getting back to work.
Sometimes I’ve thought I might’ve been better suited to the 1880s, all except for having to take a crap huddled together with people on your immediate right and left.
→ B.Dunn, Jan 07, 2010, 07 41 am
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Weather Dweebs
(Media • Climate)
Normally I would consider it silly providing you with a local weather forecast. But today everyone continues – as they have for the past two days – to pretend that we’re to have mostly sunny skies with highs in the lower 70s.
We aren’t. It’s overcast and 50 as of 1:45 p.m. Yet if you check with the National Weather Service, the local news experts at the Houston Chronicle or their counterparts at KHOU-TV, you’re still told that by gosh it’s Sunday afternoon, so you are enjoying a sunny day with a nice southern breeze and balmy 70-degree temps.
Earth to Texas weather dweebs: Someone stick your toe out the window. It’s a wind-blistered world we’re a-livin’ in.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 13, 2009, 01 07 pm
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What Global Warming?
(Climate • Nature)
2008 shapes up as the 10th-warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. They also took a look at the last year in weather, with plenty of swell highlights including:
“A remarkable occurrence in 2008 was the dramatic disappearance of nearly one-quarter of the massive ancient ice shelves on Ellesmere Island. Ice 70 metres thick, which a century ago covered 9 000 km2, has been chiselled down to just 1 000 km2 today…”
Meanwhile, the Green Grok shows that all of the Top 10 Warmest Weather Years occurred within the past 11 years.
Huh. Probably just coinky-dink.
Nevertheless, I’m thinking it won’t hurt to ramp up my experiments in testing subtropical fruits and flowering plants for cold tolerance here on the One-Acre Ranch, strategically located in USDA Growing Zone 9, but apparently headed toward Zone 10 at least temporarily.
→ B.Dunn, Dec 26, 2008, 02 47 pm
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