2022-2023 Winter Weather Thread

[Grade of D as in David 13255]

16 minutes ago, royiv said:

WTF do you expect your city councilwoman to do? Come over to your house and personally restore the power? 

What if she's a disaster scientist? 

[Underdog 29132]

Reportedly -104 WC at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. 

[BrazilHorn 6808]

22 minutes ago, royiv said:

WTF do you expect your city councilwoman to do? Come over to your house and personally restore the power? 

No. She sent note out, I didn’t call her. She sent some note that basically said “get wrecked “. I don’t expect her to do anything. Also sending a note that does nothing also doesn’t help. 
 

[royiv 9748]

20 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

Where’s our esteemed governor in all this to get us more outside help for repairs?? All I’ve seen from him is how great the grid is holding up and that people here should report damage. Venal prick.

Abbott enjoys watching Austin suffer. As long as he has power, he's laughing his ass off.

[rivin 199]

Power was out from 2/2 9a to 2/3 4p in 78754 in one of the new sections behind Samsung. Definitely not as bad as a lot of folks since we got the warmer days without power, and I am thankful for that.

[royiv 9748]

5 minutes ago, BrazilHorn said:

No. She sent note out, I didn’t call her. She sent some note that basically said “get wrecked “. I don’t expect her to do anything. Also sending a note that does nothing also doesn’t help. 
 

That makes more sense. I misread what you wrote and I thought it was a hilarious humblebrag.

[demos 3035]

Manchaca is a shitshow with all the traffic lights out.

And a bunch of you assholes need to be sent to a 4-way stop reeducation camp, preferably in N Korea.

[Brisketexan 106848]

11 minutes ago, royiv said:

Abbott enjoys watching Austin suffer. As long as he has power, he's laughing his ass off.

100% this.  I would not be surprised at all by an Executive Order prohibiting any third party utility from coming to Austin's aid, because fuck Austin.  I'm sure he's steaming at all the utilities betraying his dreams by sending crews here already.

Also.....the current situation is one in which they can restore power to 13k customers a day.  109k left without power.  Even assuming a pace of 15k a day.....that's another WEEK to get us all back up and running.  I promise you, I am not counting on having power back until probably next Friday (there's zero reason to expect that we won't be last in the queue).  Because fuck it, that's the fucking way this fucking shitshow goes.

[Mrs Whiggins 13050]

In several posts the Tulsa ice storm in 2007 was mentioned for those of us that remember it, and given that it looks like the power will be out for some Austin area residents for more days, here is a self- abridged excerpt from an article (seven years later) where PSO (the electric utility in OK) workers talk about the storm and also what they learned from it:

Quote

...At one point, 78 out of every 100 PSO customers in the Tulsa area had no power for days. It's a storm that people still talk about.....The peak of the outage was Dec. 10 at 5:15 p.m. when 262,128 homes and businesses had no power....

It took an army of 5,500 utility workers from about a dozen other states to help PSO crews get the job done.
 
"So in comparison, statewide we have about 800 such resources and lot of them were concentrated in Tulsa," Baker said.
 
After the first full day of the ice storm, PSO began de-centralizing its approach to power restoration and splitting the Tulsa metro into quadrants, then assigning field leaders to do whatever needed to get the power back....

"Remove all of the red tape and things that might slow down the process, bottlenecks, and be able to get the information that the field employees need in their hands quickly and then build a process by which it's self-perpetuating," Baker said.

The storm also prompted PSO crews to conduct major storm drills twice a year.
 
"We've made the decision that we're going to intentionally over-respond, over-prepare, versus a wait-and-see approach," Baker said.

The lessons learned from 2007's unforgettable ice storm -- from tree-trimming to power line maintenance to the processes  now in place to clear the way for crews to work quickly -- have PSO confident that if another storm were to happen, Tulsa is in a much better position.

"There would be less of an impact than there was in 2007," Baker said.
 
PSO officials said it took more than 1.4 million man-hours to recover from the storm.

As I stated previously, my folks were without power for a week....

[Pato del Muerto 53420]

I’m assuming crews nationwide haven’t rallied down here because there’s plenty to do in their own states right now. 

[Anastasis 23711]

53 minutes ago, royiv said:

WTF do you expect your city councilwoman to do? Come over to your house and personally restore the power? 

A handy might be nice. 

[ChuckNorrisActionJeans 2692]

33 minutes ago, royiv said:

Abbott enjoys watching Austin suffer. As long as he has power, he's laughing his ass off.

I’m aware… but can’t our new mayor schmooze an actual response from the shithead, who also happens to lives here, like we hired him (Watson) to do?   I don’t know, this is obviously more than Austin can handle, the extra crews aren’t enough 

[Gale Snoats 246]

After zero activity all week finally a bunch of trucks in my hood 03. One of the guys told me it’s imminent but my hope is fading as that was 2 hours ago. These workers are being greeted like nazi occupied France liberators.

[Brisketexan 106848]

22 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

In several posts the Tulsa ice storm in 2007 was mentioned for those of us that remember it, and given that it looks like the power will be out for some Austin area residents for more days, here is a self- abridged excerpt from an article (seven years later) where PSO (the electric utility in OK) workers talk about the storm and also what they learned from it:

As I stated previously, my folks were without power for a week....

Yep.  Just looking at the math.....we're utterly and completely fucked.  And the cavalry is NOT coming.  This isn't something 50 courtesy crews from San Antonio can handle.  We're bailing out the Titanic with a fucking spoon.

2 minutes ago, ChuckNorrisActionJeans said:

I’m aware… but can’t our new mayor schmooze an actual response from the shithead, who also happens to lives here, like we hired him (Watson) to do?   I don’t know, this is obviously more than Austin can handle, the extra crews aren’t enough 

No.  Again, I would be completely unsurprised if any efforts we made to get more help were stymied by Abbott.  Notice how he's been fucking SILENT about this?  He's enjoying it.  If this had befallen a county he won, he'd be there, having a press conference, and announcing that he'd coordinated with multiple governors to bring in resources.  When it happens to blue Travis County?  Crickets (well, you can hear more than that -- you can hear the gleeful cackles coming from the governor's mansion).

 

[Gale Snoats 246]

No.  Again, I would be completely unsurprised if any efforts we made to get more help were stymied by Abbott.  Notice how he's been fucking SILENT about this?  He's enjoying it.  If this had befallen a county he won, he'd be there, having a press conference, and announcing that he'd coordinated with multiple governors to bring in resources.  When it happens to blue Travis County?  Crickets (well, you can hear more than that -- you can hear the gleeful cackles coming from the governor's mansion).
 

Abbot’s was in corpus spewing voucher bullshit while this was happening. He thinks it’s funny.

[ChuckNorrisActionJeans 2692]

Well I see the city decided an hour ago that we met the threshold to be able to declare an emergency— in order to access FEMA funds and get more statewide help. As if Wheels wouldn’t have discretion to do that regardless?? And Williamson Co declared one on TUESDAY. Interesting shit.

[demos 3035]

A handy might be nice. 

There’s definitely one councilmember with experience in that area.

[Dahobbs 18238]

35 minutes ago, Gale Snoats said:

Abbot’s was in corpus spewing voucher bullshit while this was happening. He thinks it’s funny.

You'd think he'd be more sympathetic to those victimized by falling trees. 

[Wally Pryor 5400]

1 hour ago, Underdog said:

Reportedly -104 WC at Mt. Washington in New Hampshire. 

 

Made it to -106. 

 

[Biff Tannen 46134]

6 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

You'd think he'd be more sympathetic to those victimized by falling trees. 

Well he did help pass a law that stopped anyone in his same situation from getting paid like he did, so probably not. 

Edited February 4, 2023 by Biff Tannen

[yoladu 4187]

54 minutes ago, Gale Snoats said:

After zero activity all week finally a bunch of trucks in my hood 03. One of the guys told me it’s imminent but my hope is fading as that was 2 hours ago. These workers are being greeted like nazi occupied France liberators.

I think we are in same neighborhood. Saw them an hour ago. Lots of project managing going on. They seem to have disappeared now.
 

No power. 

[Updawg 2382]

Well he did help pass a law that stopped anyone in his same situation from getting paid like he did, so probably not. 

Exactly

He already got paid. He don’t give a shit now.

Did Williamson county really declare a disaster and Travis hasn’t?

[Cap33 407]

4 minutes ago, yoladu said:

I think we are in same neighborhood. Saw them an hour ago. Lots of project managing going on. They seem to have disappeared now.
 

No power. 

I hope neither of you is on Wooldridge between 29th and Claire. 

Same neighborhood, and we've had a flurry of activity down the street. One AE guy told my neighbor that they can't understand why it's not coming back on. So here we are in night three of hotel living.

[Biff Tannen 46134]

1 minute ago, Cap33 said:

I hope neither of you is on Wooldridge between 29th and Claire. 

Same neighborhood, and we've had a flurry of activity down the street. One AE guy told my neighbor that they can't understand why it's not coming back on. So here we are in night three of hotel living.

This is disheartening. 

[Hpara759 1791]

4 minutes ago, Updawg said:

Exactly

He already got paid. He don’t give a shit now.

Did Williamson county really declare a disaster and Travis hasn’t?

Don't know what Travis has done....but yes Wilco has

[Judge Roybeanbag 11860]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  Just looking at the math.....we're utterly and completely fucked.  And the cavalry is NOT coming.  This isn't something 50 courtesy crews from San Antonio can handle.  We're bailing out the Titanic with a fucking spoon.

No.  Again, I would be completely unsurprised if any efforts we made to get more help were stymied by Abbott.  Notice how he's been fucking SILENT about this?  He's enjoying it.  If this had befallen a county he won, he'd be there, having a press conference, and announcing that he'd coordinated with multiple governors to bring in resources.  When it happens to blue Travis County?  Crickets (well, you can hear more than that -- you can hear the gleeful cackles coming from the governor's mansion).

 

Of course he enjoys it, every time a tree branch falls, his brain goes Kaching$!

[CleverNickname 1345]

9 minutes ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Of course he enjoys it, every time a tree branch falls, his brain goes Kaching$!

He can't be in Austin, because he needs working elevators. That's not a slam or a joke, just a practical observation. 

[Underdog 29132]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

Yep.  Just looking at the math.....we're utterly and completely fucked.  And the cavalry is NOT coming.  This isn't something 50 courtesy crews from San Antonio can handle.  We're bailing out the Titanic with a fucking spoon.

No.  Again, I would be completely unsurprised if any efforts we made to get more help were stymied by Abbott.  Notice how he's been fucking SILENT about this?  He's enjoying it.  If this had befallen a county he won, he'd be there, having a press conference, and announcing that he'd coordinated with multiple governors to bring in resources.  When it happens to blue Travis County?  Crickets (well, you can hear more than that -- you can hear the gleeful cackles coming from the governor's mansion).

 

It could've been worse - Hot Wheels

[Wally Pryor 5400]

44 minutes ago, Updawg said:

Exactly

He already got paid. He don’t give a shit now.

Did Williamson county really declare a disaster and Travis hasn’t?

Travis has.

[UTexasFight 9793]

23 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

I’m going to be without AE power for way longer than ‘21 aren’t I? (2.5 days)

Just got power back in 23.

 

Bested my ‘21 mark by a couple of hours.

60 hrs this time vs 58.5 in ‘21.

let’s not make another run at this in 2025

[A-Tex Devil 2496]

Back up in Bee Cave Woods according to my neighbor and my Google Home app - One hour after I checked into hotel and got kids ready to go to sleep.  I am going back to tee house up for the morning - run dishwasher, laundry, all that crap.  But it may take me several hours to complete those tasks before I get back to the fam, the last couple of which will be at the Westin Bar.  

[Gale Snoats 246]

This is disheartening. 

I’m a block or 2 away. They were all over the place and one of them told me it was about to happen. It did for about 2 minutes and now 3 hours later here we are in the dark. Fuck everything.

[Judge Roybeanbag 11860]

Made it out to my place in Hays Co.   Not as bad as I expected, was able to clear the road by hand and chainsaw.   No damage to any structures, and more importantly even though the power has been out for 24 hours, I rescued the 15lbs or so of sausage from the freezer.   It was 42 in the house so none of it had started to thaw.   PEC probably won’t have power on out there for another 24 hours at least. Those dudes are working their asses off.  

Edited February 4, 2023 by Judge Roybeanbag

[swraith 348]

I’m at the 64 hour mark in 78757 in Allandale. We haven’t seen any sign of AE. I’m not hopeful the power comes back by the end of the weekend. Our outage is only tied to 58 customers, so smaller than some of the other larger outages on AE’s outage map. 

Edited February 5, 2023 by swraith

[PTINS 3500]

8 hours ago, Ten Bears said:

People cook with live oak?  I always thought it made kind of rancid smoke.

Yeah, the smoke makes your eyes water, but the meat ... ooohhh, talk about...makes your mouth water, and you make uncontrollable uuummm sounds!

My Family moved to Bastrop in 1871, been cooking over oak since then.  My uncles cooked for the National Guard for 25 years, and have cooked for our Family Reunions since 1980. My grandmother's (1900-1968) family is 1 of 8 (last picture, 12 UT grads), ~ 250-300 people total.

We usually cook ~ 15-20 ~ 15-20 lb briskets, and ~ 170 lbs of Elgin Sausage (Southside Market).  

No complaints yet, except from maybe the family cardiologist.   

 

 

 

[Biff Tannen 46134]

Almost down to only 5 digits of outages!  

[YGIFS 19458]

1 hour ago, Judge Roybeanbag said:

Made it out to my place in Hays Co.   Not as bad as I expected, was able to clear the road by hand and chainsaw.   No damage to any structures, and more importantly even though the power has been out for 24 hours, I rescued the 15lbs or so of sausage from the freezer.   It was 42 in the house so none of it had started to thaw.   PEC probably won’t have power on out there for another 24 hours at least. Those dudes are working their asses off.  

Will trade manual labor for a couple pounds of sausage this weekend.  Yes I realize that sentence is ripe with innuendo but I gotta keep moving, it’s cold in the house.  

[TexEx15 17919]

https://www.pec.coop/news/2023/winter-storm-update-friday-february-3/

Pretty fucking discouraging. May be Monday before we are restored.

[Brisketexan 106848]

https://www.pec.coop/news/2023/winter-storm-update-friday-february-3/

Pretty fucking discouraging. May be Monday before we are restored.

PEC: finished by Monday.
Austin: Monday sounds good. Monday the 20th, right?

[HornOnTheBayou 9061]

4 hours ago, demos said:

Manchaca is a shitshow with all the traffic lights out.

And a bunch of you assholes need to be sent to a 4-way stop reeducation camp, preferably in N Korea.

The scary thing is the lights that are not even flashing red, just out. There's two on Parmer near Mopac. If you didn't know the lights were there you would fly right through them, because you can't see them in the dark. 

[YGIFS 19458]

Mmmhmmm, how many Mondays in March?

[InkaUtexas 26854]

57 minutes ago, PTINS said:

Yeah, the smoke makes your eyes water, but the meat ... ooohhh, talk about...makes your mouth water, and you make uncontrollable uuummm sounds!

My Family moved to Bastrop in 1871, been cooking over oak since then.  My uncles cooked for the National Guard for 25 years, and have cooked for our Family Reunions since 1980. My grandmother's (1900-1968) family is 1 of 8 (last picture, 12 UT grads), ~ 250-300 people total.

We usually cook ~ 15-20 ~ 15-20 lb briskets, and ~ 170 lbs of Elgin Sausage (Southside Market).  

No complaints yet, except from maybe the family cardiologist.   

 

 

 

I miss Bastrop BBQ. 

 

[InkaUtexas 26854]

Cannot make this shit up.

https://twitter.com/KXAN_Weather/status/1621654622216519681

 

Well dear KXAN, this is how I planned on dressing. 

[Texas Jeff 1999]

Not sure if this was covered earlier, but you can help if you don’t have power now by turning off switches, thermostats, etc around your house and leaving one light on to let you know that power is back.

This lowers the “cold load” on the system when they re-energize a circuit and helps them by bringing load on gradually, rather than all at once.

Once your one light comes back on, turn your stuff back on.

[PTINS 3500]

31 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

I miss Bastrop BBQ. 
 

We used to go there when I took Drivers Ed. Tooling around in the country eating a hot link, good times.

[InkaUtexas 26854]

I lived out there. Taught my son how to drive on back roads to pick up Elgin Sausage for the grill. 

[Homercles 10206]

6 hours ago, utee94 said:

Oh man, my inlaws who have been without power in 31, are now going to come stay with us.  We get along really well, but we don't typically live under the same roof.  

Might need to begin cross-posting to the "holidays with family" thread...

[ftf82 491]

6 hours ago, YGIFS said:

AE finally admitted the crux of the problem rests largely with the Eanes creekbed.  Some folks self-prune like me, some folks have pros prune for them, some folks say "get off my lawn" and don't prune at all, some at least heed warnings from AE.  But nobody really pays attention to the growth in the creekbed.  Especially the Energy department charged with paying attention to it.  So lots of overgrowth since 2021.  Nobody checked up on it.  They estimate from Rollingwood to Loop 360, in the multiple hundreds of downed limbs over the lines.  They have to get every one of 'em off before they can retry distribution.  That will not happen until tomorrow at best, quite possibly Sunday.  

Nobody, not nobody walked the fucking bed since Winter 2021.  Half the shit lying on lines has been dead and on there since 2021.  Yeah, it's dead and not getting bigger...but guess what it did do?  Served as a large, albeit narrow, ice tray to just weight down on lines.  And the other half was getting bigger with water draw and also served as an ice collector.  They're blaming homeowners who wouldn't prune/allow pruning (and rightfully so in part)...but they had zero fucking idea what was going on down on the creekbed all the way out to 360.  I don't blame the guys on the ground.  they gotta job to do and they're fucking busting ass.  I blame the guy at a desk at that office on Barton Springs who thought, "Meh, most of the trees down there are already dead from 2021...how much damage can they do if they already fell over?"  Yeah, 'cause trees are like video game characters, the second they die...they fall over and stay still.  

From DC to the Pink Dome to City Hall to my HOA...we are on the dumbest fucking timeline. 

Friends who live off Bee Cave and Walsh Tarlton in our old neighborhood got their power back a couple of hours ago, so hopefully moving quicker now. We lived off Wilderness in the late 90s/early 00s and walked that creek a lot with my kids. AE never cleared it back then either, but the main issue in the 90s was flooding not freezing.

[atomheartbevo 90606]

6 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

As I stated previously, my folks were without power for a week....

I had relatives outside of Tulsa who were without power for well over a week, and they all have generators now.  

We finally got consistent power back this afternoon.  Thankfully our problem seemed fairly easy to fix, as in one or two transformers and no pole replacements.  Lost most of the fridge, as everybody that we knew that still had power and were close by had their fridges full from everybody else without power, since in some cases was literally one street had power, the next didn't, etc.  Saved everything from the freezer as we found somebody that could take it all in.

Going to buy a few more small power banks for phones/USB-charged lights, etc., as we had some Internet access and our kids night lights worked for what we needed.

They seem to be getting power back on faster and faster - down to under 84,000 right now.  The crew working our outage said the pole replacements were a major issue, which I get, especially given the weather was shitty up until last night, and I'd assume the ground is iffy due to all of the rain.  And I know which trees caused our outages, and they are being dealt with.  Edit: also, some of the larger transformers were an issue, but they didn't say whether it was a supply or an installation issue, and we weren't going to bug them.

Edited February 4, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[otisdog 365]

13 hours ago, Underdog said:

Buying stock in generac as sales about to go boom in Texas. 

Costco is having a $500 off sale on their 22Kw generac gennys  the 6th thru the 10th.