Cold weather coming this week, get those hose bibs covered...

[Josh]

I dunno, I get tired of folks from other places telling us how much worse it is there.

Like, yeah, I get it that AZ has triple digit temps every summer. But it also has AC in every house/building. Sure don't have that up here. Yeah, it's colder in the midwest. But there are plows and salting trucks and, as mentioned, no hills.

It's less how bad it is, and more how prepared your area is to handle it. The west side of the PNW doesn't get down to single digits or have to deal with significant snow very often. So it shuts the place down more than it should when it happens.

 

[Gyrfalcon22]

This guy needs to drop 3 jugs and 3 loaves and pick up 3 cases of beer and 3 handles of booze.

Am guessing he has a cart full of extracurriculars behind him : )

 

[Mossback]

You should have seen the lineup at a pot shop near Port Townsend. Mostly older folks too, greybeards and cottontops for sure.
Gotta watch them, they pull right out into traffic sometimes...then cut across to get to the organic farmstand.


Grocery store was quick and easy, no lines at all this morning.

Bring it On

 

[SurfnFish]

4 degree low this weekend, 4' of snow up high, coupla feet at our house...

 

[nwbobber]

You guys in Montana and the like probably don't have to contend with the people limping around with nearly bald tires who can't seem to understand they should not take a vehicle equipped in such a way out on the roads with nearly molten h2o. We have reason to be afraid when the snow comes. Of each other.

 

[Pink Nighty]

At the bus stop waiting for big sis! 19 and dropping

 

[NRC]

280.4 Kelvin here in Tacoma.

 

[FinLuver]

I dunno, I get tired of folks from other places telling us how much worse it is there.

Like, yeah, I get it that AZ has triple digit temps every summer. But it also has AC in every house/building. Sure don't have that up here. Yeah, it's colder in the midwest. But there are plows and salting trucks and, as mentioned, no hills.

It's less how bad it is, and more how prepared your area is to handle it. The west side of the PNW doesn't get down to single digits or have to deal with significant snow very often. So it shuts the place down more than it should when it happens.

Shutting down on the wet side of the NW, is fairly recent phenomenon.

 

[FinLuver]

View attachment 98881

The guy or the weather??

 

[nwbobber]

Shutting down on the wet side of the NW, is fairly recent phenomenon.

I'm 66. It's been a shitshow most of the snowstorms I've seen. Not because they don't "know how to drive in it", like a lot of folks from colder climes claim, but because of the preparedness of the drivers (tires) and the fact that snow and ice close to their melting point is at it's slickest. One guy spins out and traffic starts backing up, causing a chain reaction.
I've always been able to make it to work, but I had a well prepared vehicle to do it in.

 

[Hem]

Wait until the snow actually hits. Seattle is not quite as flat as Three Forks. Plus they are not allowed to drive quads and snowmobiles on public streets.
That's when this thread will convert to videos of cars and busses sliding backwards down the hills. That's when it gets funny!

We have a thing called snow tires.
Work pretty good even when it's snowing at -20 with a 30mph crosswind. Guess that's why I see alot of Washington people in the ditch. They thought it was flat, no problem.

 

[Mossback]

Updated forecast...

 

[Roper]

I’m from the Rochester area of NY. Y’all don’t know the real meaning of snow…can you say lake effect?

 

[O' Clarkii Stomias]

I’m from the Rochester area of NY. Y’all don’t know the real meaning of snow…can you say lake effect?

I grew up in Salt Lake where we had some pretty crazy lake effect storms. I thought I had seen it all until I was at Steven's Pass. One year, on top of a couple of feet on a Friday night, we received 3 feet during operating hours on Saturday. At around 3 pm it started to rain. At around 4, both sides of the pass closed due to avalanches stranding thousands overnight. Pure chaos!

 

[_WW_]

We have a thing called snow tires.
Work pretty good even when it's snowing at -20 with a 30mph crosswind. Guess that's why I see alot of Washington people in the ditch. They thought it was flat, no problem.

Even snow country has crazy drivers.
True story:
In 1969 I was taking the new Driver's Ed course in high school in a south Denver suburb. The car had 3 students and the instructor in it and it had been snowing all day. One of the students went by the nickname of Goof and he was driving. We were on a road that follows a creek/ditch and as we came around a blind corner there was a snowplow barreling right at us. Goof went for the ditch to avoid a head on collision. The car took damage but no one was hurt. Goof was written up as a hero in the papers and got some kind of civic recognition. The rest of the school just looked at it as Goof wrecked the Driver's Ed car.

Denver was the lowest elevation that I ever lived at in Colorado. I used to take my '72 Bronco out to the ranch lands east of town and find a virgin road after a snow storm. Chain up all four wheels and have some fun. More than once snow would be breaking off the windshield as we hit a drift or a low spot in the road. You needed to stop every so often and clean out the grill and let the engine cool down. All those places I went are now covered in asphalt, sidewalks, and other civilized debris.

Looks pretty flat to me.

 

[Brian Miller]

BTW, when it comes to winterization, don't forget our backyard feathered friends. Our hummer feeders were frozen this morning so I brought them in to thaw and refresh the sugar water (1:4). I also brought out my DIY feeder heaters and got mobbed by hungry hummers as I was clipping the heaters on the feeders and routing-securing the cables.

NFR - Hummer Hearth - (hummingbird feeder heater)

Just thought this might be of interest to some of you after seeing @Brian Miller post a photo of his hummingbird feeder with lights keeping it warm on the weather thread. For the past couple of years we've used a clever WA made product called a Hummer Hearth that clips onto the bottom of the...

pnwflyfishing.com

NFR - Hummer Hearth - (hummingbird feeder heater)

This did not work for us at 25oF or less...we use a cheapo aluminum shop light with a 60W bulb attached with twine, we've had hummingbirds below zero...pretty amazing they stay around...

pnwflyfishing.com

 

[Josh]

BTW, when it comes to winterization, don't forget our backyard feathered friends. Our hummer feeders were frozen this morning so I brought them in to thaw and refresh the sugar water (1:4). I also brought out my DIY feeder heaters and got mobbed by hungry hummers as I was clipping the heaters on the feeders and running the cables.

NFR - Hummer Hearth - (hummingbird feeder heater)

Just thought this might be of interest to some of you after seeing @Brian Miller post a photo of his hummingbird feeder with lights keeping it warm on the weather thread. For the past couple of years we've used a clever WA made product called a Hummer Hearth that clips onto the bottom of the...

pnwflyfishing.com

NFR - Hummer Hearth - (hummingbird feeder heater)

This did not work for us at 25oF or less...we use a cheapo aluminum shop light with a 60W bulb attached with twine, we've had hummingbirds below zero...pretty amazing they stay around...

pnwflyfishing.com

I'll second this. The Hummer Hearths are made here in WA. I recently had to contact them for a bit of product support and the owner was rad enough to send me the replacement part for free. Pretty awesome considering mine is a couple years old. He even included a spare bulb. There are knockoffs out there, but I'd 100% support buying local and getting the real Hummer Hearth version. Heck, I bought one for my mom just this past christmas.

THAT SAID...

These heaters (and any heaters really) only work until the temps drop past a certain point. We've had to change our feeder multiple times today because even with the Hummer Hearth and a heatlamp pointed at it, the juice freezes up after a few hours in this bitter temp/windchill situation we've got going on. But even so, we've had plenty of birds drinking out of it all day.

 

[SurfnFish]

Supposed to be -6 here in Spokane Saturday night...and that's not chill factor.

Usually hit a few stretches of cold like that every winter.

Worst I remember was a static -25 in the winter of '68. Couldn't bury my grandmother for a few weeks. Ground like concrete.

I'm starting to sound like one of those old guys sitting around a pot-bellied stove at the general store.

"How about passin' around that jar of pickled eggs. A swig of shine wouldn't hurt either

Daughter lives in South Hill up high...put's dedicated snow tires on her Outback every winter...has tales of cars sliding backwards down the hills during minus zero black ice events

 

[krusty]

Daughter lives in South Hill up high...put's dedicated snow tires on her Outback every winter...has tales of cars sliding backwards down the hills during minus zero black ice events

All it takes is one car with a driver that thinks that 'putting the pedal to the metal' will get them up the hill....and a chain reaction impacts everyone behind them. I've seen plenty of FWD/AWD/4WD stackups on minor hills you could easily climb in a rear drive vehicle equipped with bald tires...if you weren't trying to 'power' your way up.

'Easy does it' is the best way to navigate slick roads.

 

[MT406]

1 degree is a heat wave compared to here. -72 in Malta