Good morning!!!!

[RedNeckGeek]

RNG nice work on the winch, get hardware for the ballast attachments?

Musta snuck one by you, Bruce.:confused3:

The old bolts for the railroad tracks/ballast were too short, so I cut a couple of 2" lengths of 3/4" bar stock and welded 'em in to make the bolts longer. The rusty brown things stacked on top of the box blade are the railroad track pieces, and you can't see the bolts in the photo.



The new box blade weighs 835 lbs. and I figure the tracks add another couple hundred pounds. The old box blade weighed maybe 500 lbs with the tracks, so I'm hoping the extra weight will help with rear wheel traction when the bucket is full of rocks.

 

[rswyan]

We had four RBO's at LCR today. All began on the hour and lasted exactly 40 minutes each time. Patricia had none but .. was surrounded by areas with power out most of the day .. some still out.

Part of this .. is a result of about 25,000 megawatts of wind turbines, in W. Texas, being frozen up from ice storms, and non-operable. This demonstrates that reliable power generation MUST be from all available sources. Relying on Solar and Wind only is the biggest fairy tale ever.

Natural gas fired power plants .. are still the most efficient/ effective / reliable source of power we have.

Preach it!
Give me clean burn coal and NG.

Facts .. are facts.

Yes, they certainly are.

As I understand it, Governor Abbott himself said that some NG and coal generators were frozen out as well as wind. In fact, it seems that most of the facilities that were knocked offline were gas, coal, or nuclear.

I also understand that Texas failed to invest in cold weather packages for their wind turbines, which might have allowed them to continue to operate ? After all, it's always warm there ... right ?

Until it isn't.

Now I don't know if those cold weather packages would necessarily mean that they could operate in whatever conditions are going on down there at the moment, but it seems that someone, somewhere failed to consider a possible worst case scenario.

Something about failing to plan = planning to fail comes to mind.

No idea whether those turbines could be retrofitted with cold weather packages ... or what the cost might be. Could be prohibitively expensive at this point (might be something that needs to be spec'd when the turbine is ordered/before it's actually built)

Might be worthwhile to look to our northern neighbor for some insights and/or advice ... given they probably have extensive experience with cold weather operations.

Wind Energy in Cold Climates - Government of Canada

Also have no idea how much the fact that much of Texas is on its own electrical grid might have played into this, in terms of being able to connect into the rest of the US power grid ... or whether that could have been helpful.

But in what might be the ultimate of ironies, I understand a bill was recently introduced in the TX Leg to secede from the United States. (I thought we settled that question over 150 years ago ... seems some wanna have another go at it however ... )

Two days ago Governor Abbott made a request to the White House for a Federal Emergency Declaration.

Of course, it was granted.

In any event, hope y'all stay safe and warm.

Been through the lack of power/heat and it surely ain't no fun.

 

[RoyJackson]

2021-02-16, 0336

23 right now and the snow's coming down pretty steadily...looks like 2" or so and it looks wet. Per the the forecast, we'll see another 3-5 before it's done...along with some sleet/freezing rain. High in the low 30's.
Good day to work from home, I think. Since I won't be driving in, think I'll lie back down for a bit

Randy, my deepest sympathies to you and family. Your mom lived a full, productive life...

 

[ronjhall]

Coffee is brewing. 10° with snow and wind this morning. Heading to 17° with snow ending and wind dropping in afternoon. Will get tractor out and clean walkways and drive after snow and wind stops. Locks like we got about 6" of new snow. Plus lots of drifts.
Got a couple hundred photos scanned. Plus about 100 slides and film converted. Doing photos is fast and easy. Film and slides takes a lot more handling. For the time being I am going to only do photos. Then see what I do not have and scan the film. I have four 2'X3' containers of photos and film/slides to scan. Most of them are what my wife and I took over the years. But there are also full albums from both sides of our families going back over 100 years. Editing what the photos are will take more time. Good time to work on them.
Looking at you.

Randy, prayers for your family.

RNG, I like you train track for counter weight. I made front bumper for my Farmall 340 out it.

LS, glad you getting better. Always takes me awhile to recover from pain meds.

Wngsprd, glad you got power back.

All those in the path of this storm stay safe and warm.

Everyone stay healthy and safe.

Good Morning All.

 

[daugen]

good morning all. Sleet and freezing rain all night making noise on windows, about 35 out now and warming up today,
should melt most of the snow.

Randy, prayers for your Mom and hope her memory brings smiles. You had a wonderful long life with her.

not much planned for today other than going to get my passport renewed.

6 inches of snow now predicted for Thursday.

 

[Rich B1]

Good morning! 22 now, supposed to slowly drop all day. Overbite low of 1.

The snowmageddon was a bust. We got almost all freezing rain. It is a mess, but we are not buried in snow. All 138 school districts in the Cleveland TV market area are closed. Gonna be a 都low roll to town for work today.

Everyone stay safe out there

 

[riptides]

36 outside this AM, heading to......54. Warming trend before another round of possible snow/ice moves in.

Yesterday while working on the barn had an interesting find. Some old cabinets have been in there since we bought the place. Large, over 8 feet tall, one door each runs the length of the cabinet. Inside a nice varnished finish, some new hangers and what not.

They have always been in the way, just never found a space for them. Also the fact that the bottoms were cut to conform to the sidewalk slant did not help in the overall positioning. Well I moved them and decided to fix the bottoms. New framing so they sit flat. I had finished both and decided to take the brush to them moving the dust off.

I flipped one over and found some signatures written on the back. Three gentleman and all had dates of - January, 1944. Wow...I had thought they were from the 70's.

I moved both against a wall and bolted them in. A fresh outside coat of paint, along with the barn inside awaits.

And to think they almost made it to the dump a few times.

Hope all have a great day. Be safe, try and stay warm, and stay healthy my friends.

 

[mpham]

Sorry for your loss Randy.
Morning all!
31 here with rain falling down on the frozen ground. Looks like quite the icy mess.I have flashlights and candles around the house just in case of power outage. Generator is hooked up and full of gas. I ran it yesterday to make sure it would be ready.
Power has been on steady so far and we have no where to go so will just hunker down and wait it out.
Hope everyone is safe and healthy and we all can come out of this storm in good shape.

 

[Looking4new]

Good morning, the temperature is a balmy 1°F and going to a high of 5. Wind NNE 13 gusting to 25 mph. Snow! It is supposed to be about 4" but so far we've got 8", not including drifts.

I will go out at day break and clean it all up.

I've got the vet appointment today at 1 P.M. IF we can find the little ninjas.


Have a safe day all

 

[workinonit]

57 and finally a break in the rain after a band of storms came through last night that was pretty bad and probably brought another inch of rain. supposed to rain again this weekend.

Sorry for your loss Randy. I wish you would have made it in time. Same thing happened to me with my mom but I made it there for dad.

 

[Buppies]

Another inch of rain frozen again but still have power. Made the local news filmed power company replacing pole lines and had power company representative explain what they did. Have sock filter in pond to prevent pollution

Maybe get to 40 today but 35 mph gusts hopefully power stays on

Again sorry for your loss Toppop

Prayers for all our Country

 

[daugen]

This demonstrates that reliable power generation MUST be from all available sources

I agree. Probably only exception might be hydro where you have overcapacity.
But even hydros break...or the transmission lines to and from them have a problem. Or you have an earthquake.

LNG fired steam boilers is proven tech, much cleaner than coal, though hard coal with state of the art scrubbers on the stacks
do a good job too. If all those folks supporting their families by digging coal could look forward to an equal or better paying, safer job
this whole changeover process would go much faster.

Until then, maximizing solar, hydro and wind makes sense. But since they don't work all the time, need lots of backup.

on a fairly ugly pier, in fact several of them, in NYC float a number of big barges with "peaker" turbines running on some form of petroleum fuel.
Basically old tech jet engines tied to a big generator. They come on when everything else runs out. I can't imagine what the air quality was like anywhere near them.
Steam powered (coal, LNG, nuke) powerplants need a water source for cooling so they are near rivers or bays. Which of course is where the population is, not out in the middle of the prairie.
The prairie instead is good for solar and wind power, as well as feeding us all.

We know how to make clean power, not enough will power in most countries yet to make it happen, but we are making progress.
If only we could figure out how to safely dispose
of nuclear waste. The challenge for us of course is we live on this earth with
many other folks, some who are going their laundry in the same water their cows are using for a toilet.

One just has to look at China to see what happens if we don't pay any attention to our environment and simply allow the lowest cost solution to be maintained.
Whereas look at Iceland where 100 percent of their power is renewable energy, hydro and geothermal. But even they find they need backup petroleum fired generators.
I believe the old adage about not having all one's eggs in one basket sure applies here.

 

[Popgadget]

Good Morning
It’s 37 and raining with a high in the mid 40’s and clearing forecast.
That’s a whole lot better than the ice that was predicted earlier. Nice day tomorrow and then snow on Thursday

Yesterday was another day without outside interruption, I spent the whole day in the shop.Got the 3D printer situated and making steady progress on speakers.

Spent a batch of time researching the R4 tires on my tractor,as far as pressure and the setting for the electronic display to give an accurate speed, rather than tire circumference, Kubota uses a 4 digit code that doesn’t seem to have a mathematical relationship to the actual circumference. The complication was that the code for R4 tires was not in the workshop manual. I did a batch of searching online, and found codes, but not for my exact model (L6060HSTC). I finally reached out to the dealer, and the service manager didn’t know either, but to his credit, called me back with the code by the end of the day. So basically it was an exercise in OCD on my part just to make the speedometer read accurately.

RNG- I don’t think that the heavier box would add traction unless it was lifted off the ground. I would think that if it was engaged with the ground and full of rocks, it would increase the need for traction with a higher draft force, but can’t see how it would add traction. Perhaps I’m missing something.

Randy, sorry about your mom, I definitely second looking through her things carefully for hidden treasure, I’m still going through my Mom’s things and finding things in the craziest places.

Looks like we will have reasonably decent weather for the move today.

Still no vaccine, but it seems to be getting a little closer.

 

[Thomas]

Sorry for loss of tour mother Randy...special thoughts prayers..

 

[Thomas]

28F now mid low 30's for high,3" inches snow mostly sleet mix still falling.

Outside chores done E muffin time.
Plans for today...storm should be departing 1-2pm I start snow clean up until than putter.

Enjoy and stay safe all.

 

[Buppies]

Beautiful glaze on the trees now sun is coming up clouds dispersing beautiful day if dry enough tree removal again two years in a row

Maybe put some food out for four legged critters

 

[farmeratheart]

Good morning All.

36 this morning when the dogs got up. 39 right now and headed to 45 ... OMG WHAT’S THAT BRIGHT LIGHT IN THE EASTERN SKY? Sorry, it has been a few days since we’ve seen the sun!

Have a good day.

Frank

 

[txdon]

Good morning! ZERO DEGREES F. The coldest of all mornings.

Rolling blackouts caused the house temp to drop to 55˚F, Garage 37˚F. UPS with no load used up half of it's battery supply. There was a 6 hour gap in the Tempest weather station reporting. I rebooted it and it came back on line the last reading before reboot was at midnight was 2˚F

Another ice weather event is hitting tonight. The vaccination site has shut down and my 2nd shot has been re-scheduled to Saturday. Only one vehicle ventured out on my street yesterday and came back in a few minutes. probably could not make it up the hill at the end of the street. Goal of the day is just to keep things running. House is back up to 60˚F. We have been below freezing now for 5 days.

Edit: the kitchen oven clock is 3.5 hours behind, so w had 3.5 hours of rolling blackouts last night.

There is no wind now so the wind turbines are making no electricity, hopefully someone will clean the solar panels and we will get a few hours there before the storms hit again or night comes.

 

[wngsprd]

36 going to 58 and maybe some sun.

Hard to believe the forecasters anymore...most of the last few months they have had a pretty tough job calling it...like predicting a quarter inch of rain last night but actually getting an inch. Now we are looking at another ice storm this week that they say will be worse than Saturday's. Hope they are wrong this time.

Sorry you guys in Texas are having blackouts. That may become the norm for the whole country moving forward.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

RNG- I don’t think that the heavier box would add traction unless it was lifted off the ground. I would think that if it was engaged with the ground and full of rocks, it would increase the need for traction with a higher draft force, but can’t see how it would add traction. Perhaps I’m missing something.

I agree that putting more weight on the box blade won't help when it's on the ground, but a bucket full of rocks will help in that situation. My biggest issue is moving the pallets of firewood up to the garage, which involves a steep grade and a turn. Without rear ballast, the rear wheels will spin, even on concrete, so I keep it in 4WD. That puts the drive line components under stress when I try to turn on the concrete, so it's a no-win situation. So far it's been a pretty mild winter out here, and hopefully I won't get a chance to see if more weight out back solves the issue if this last pallet of firewood gets me through March.