If you live in Northeastern US are you preparing your place for the extreme cold?

Too late for me as it’s minus 30 with the windchill. High of 9 degrees today with a 40 mph wind. What I “did” was many of the things you did plus disconnect all the hoses outside. Water in hoses will destroy even frost free silcocks. Extra hats and gloves and blankets in all vehicles with take down shovels and 50 lbs of coarse sand just in case.

I’m getting ready by inviting @LuckyGuy over!

It’s a balmy 17 here, so I’m not worried – or at least I wasn’t until @LuckyGuy planted some seeds.

LAst night it was 9F, -13C, with winds gusting to 38mph, 60 kph. And it is supposed to be worse tonight.
@Cruiser Yep. That is a good reminder. I disconnected the hoses and turned off the water in the house a couple of days ago. EDIT!!!! One was still on!!! THANKS!!!

@janbb I might be ready for a trip down south after this.

@hominid Don’t let your pipes freeze!

Stacking up on even more groceries. We have a whole house generator and it really gives you a feeling of safety.
@LuckyGuy your wife must feel so secure and fuzzy with all you do around there. I bet she’s a very happy lady.

Here in the upper Midwest our high will only be -2 tomorrow and it’s only going to get colder throughout the day. I’ve heard a low of -15 is possible tomorrow night. I expect to hear about school cancellations by this evening. Our winds will be howling and our windchill will be -25 to -30 from late tonight until Thursday morning.

I enjoy cold weather, but this is too cold. This is the kind of cold that scares me because the thought of losing power is terrifying. Our roads are snow covered right now and it’s only going to get worse with the wind. Blowing snow and ground blizzards are expected out here in the country, so if we did lose power it will be dangerous to leave the house. Hopefully no one gets stranded on the highway and comes knocking on our door. We’ll help them, but our dogs don’t like strangers and will bark incessantly.

I bought supplies to last a few days and I’m going to buy a new furnace filter tonight. We’ll leave our cupboards open under the sinks and we’ll make sure our cat doesn’t go outside.

I’ve shrinkwrapped my windows, but that’s standard procedure at the onset of winter. Otherwise, it’s business as usual. We’re expecting to hit -28C (-18.4 F) in the next couple of days, but it’s not terribly unusual for it to get that cold several times during our winters. There’s no reason to expect our power to go out – although large parts of my province did experience brief outages last week due to an ice storm. All good now.

Keep warm, Americans!

The ice and expected high winds will knock tree branches off and they will take down wires. It is almost certain people will be without power somewhere in this or neighboring counties.

@jonsblond I have no intention of going outdoors tonight. I’ve already put food out for the critters: a squirrel and rotisserie chicken leftovers. I’m afraid they will be frozen solid in 20 minutes but those are the breaks.

I hope people are at least a little prepared.

I live in the North East of englandtown & I prepare for the cold by…behaving the same way all year round, kinda.

This is a little off topic but, I noticed several flocks of snow geese this afternoon. Every year between late January and mid-March we have flocks numbering 100,000. I was surprised to see them this early in the year. Thousands will land in the fields surrounding our home and it’s something I look forward to every year. I’m afraid it’s going to be too cold and windy this week for me to get out there with my camera. I would if I had the proper gloves. Mine are too bulky and that makes it difficult to control my camera. The geese are going to be in for a brutal ride the next 48 hours.

As long as the wind isn’t as bad as it was yesterday, I’m okay if it’s a chilly. Luckily, here in Boston it’s going to stay in the high of upper 20s Fahrenheit, but Wednesday night it’s going to reach 0.

We’re about in the 20s here too. Should I be concerned with turning the outside water off?

I just checked weather.com. It could feel like -50 in the north east! I’ve experienced that one time in my life. Nooo thank you!

The high today was 15. Brrrr.

@janbb I would absolutely shut off the water to the outside spigots – and disconnect the hoses. The coldest temps will hit here in Western NY at 5 pm tomorrow, 1/7/15 . I figure it will be night time when it reaches down south.

Thanks

I’m going to open my front door once the temperature gets below 80º. ;-p

We just got the call. No school tomorrow due to the cold temps.

@jonsblond Same here. They have to predict minus 40 with wind chill to call school here. Gonna be a toughie tomorrow!

The limit here is -25F wind chill. So far, school is on. National Weather Service issued a wind chill advisory from 10 AM Wednesday to 10 AM Thursday. And a 100% chance of snow tonight. 100%! They must be pretty sure. .

Here it’s supposed to be very cold Thursday with wind chill around -10 F. Then in the mid-20’s Friday and Sat, which is not that bad, in comparison.

It is brutal out there now, 8:00am. The high winds are making tall dust devils of snow that spin across my back yard and are crashing into the pine trees.
I checked the camera and no animals came by. The food was untouched. There were no tracks of any sort in the snow! They must all be hunkered down somewhere. Maybe some are in the culvert pipes I have scattered around in the woods. Everyone is riding this one out.
Stay warm! May all your pipes flow at or exceeding specifications.

I can’t even imagine what -30 is like! I’m experiencing the other end of the scale and if it gets to -5 here we think we’re freezing to death.

I’ve seen -35F. That hurts to even breathe. I want 98 degrees again.

I had frozen pipes under kitchen sink a few times and the plumber, who was really good and customer-friendly, told me not only to leave the doors open under the sink, but not to have too much stuff under there so the heat can get in there and swirl around. He also told me when I have that, take a blow dryer and put it on the pipes to get them moving, and then keep the water at a trickle to prevent it from happening again. He passed away a few years ago, but there are not many plumbers that will give you good advice that takes their business away.

@jca Open those cupboards now. The storm is heading your way.
The wind is coming right off the lake from the NorthWest. They are predicting Thundersnow with lightning later this afternoon!
Wow!

if I’ve shut off the water flow to the outside spigots, do I have to worry about the one hose still connected?

We are going down to 7 tonight but in the 20s during the day.

disconnect the hose, @janbb.

It’s cold here. 14 degrees. I let my car warm up for 20 minutes this morning before I ran an errand. It was still a block of ice after 20 minutes, and the windows wouldn’t roll down.

@LuckyGuy: Yeah, the under-sink cabinet doors have been left open since yesterday.

@janbb I am not sure what the building code specifies for your area. But here our “freeze proof” spigots have the actual valve sticking 10 or 12 inches into the house. I figured that was safe. And ordinarily it would be. BUT if the valve leaks a tiny bit (not unusual for a 50 year old house) and the hose is still connected the hose freezes solid and the water fills up the 12 inch pipe. The spigot is such a great conductor that the water freezes and cracks the pipe. I had it happen. I made it worse by putting insulation around the pipes . Now I leave them open to basement air.
If you can’t take the hose off now, relax. Just make sure both the inside and outside valves are shut off. If anything bad were to happen it will not flood your basement.

@jca Great! You are ready for tonight!

All – I have a friend with a house heated by hot water baseboard heat. He did not use one of the bedrooms so he stuffed towels over the radiator and closed it off with a bedsheet allowing that room to get cold. It got so cold, the water froze in the loop, formed a plug and would not allow circulation. Since there was no circulation another room froze as well. The furnace shut off because the boiler water was hot. He called me up to help heat the pipes in both rooms at the same time so the ice would melt and begin to flow. Once flowing the house stayed warm.

I wish wish I had in floor heating right now.

@Adirondackwannabe Then here you go.

The Realfeels here have been in the single digits, and tomorrow it’s going to be in the negatives.

It’s only 7pm here and it’s -3 with a windchill of -21. We just got the call that there will be no school again.

My toes and nose are cold.

Oh, and we have a mysterious garbage can in our field. Our nearest neighbors are east of us but our winds are out of the NW. We don’t know who the can belongs to. Those winds are fierce.

I remember asking a q on Fluther last winter, asking how low could the temperatures go before our heat systems stop being effective in heating our houses. I don’t think I got a real answer. Like if it’s -50F, and we want to heat our homes to 70F, will the systems we have now be able to do that? If it gets to -100F, will the heat systems we have be able to heat our homes to 70F?

School was called for tomorrow….the second day in a row! Probably not too cold to keep the seniors (and teachers) from going out tonight and partying!

@jonsblond It might be a dalek.

I walked to the gym and then the grocery store tonight in -12ºF weather. I can’t believe tonight (possibly even now) it’ll be -24!

-9F this am -32F with wind chill and I LOVE it! Hardly anybody on the road and got to work almost on time! Whoever invented the remote car starter and heated seats should get a Nobel Prize!

We just had white out conditions with snow squalls and sustained winds of 35 with gusts to 46. It knocked out our wifi (HughesNet.) I hate flutherin from my phone. grr

In my area there’s snow moving through with a 3 hour delay at my daughter’s school. Thank God for my parents. As for what happens later, who knows. All I know is I have to go to work.

They just closed the New York State Thruway from Rochester to the Pennsylvania border in Erie. Wow!

Thruway Closures in Western NY

“Parts of the New York State Thruway in Western New York are closed due to extreme winter weather conditions. The mainline Thruway, I-90, between Exit 46 (Henrietta) and Exit 61 (Shortman Road), as well as the Niagara Section, I-190, between I-90 and Exit 16 (I-290), are closed to all traffic. Vehicles traveling westbound on I-90 will be detoured off the roadway at Exit 46 (Henrietta) and all eastbound traffic will be detoured off at Exit 61 (Shortman Road). All vehicles traveling south on I-190 will be detoured off at Exit 16 (I-290).”

Boston public schools were closed yesterday because of the extreme cold. The forecast predicts that it won’t be cold in the next few days, but it will snow today (like, now).

Day 3 of no school due to the cold. My daughter is getting an extended holiday vacation.

@LuckyGuy Why close roads? Just for the cold, or are you getting a lot of snow also?

@dappled_leaves Yes there is also snow just to add to mix. Everyone knows how to handle ice and snow here . The roads were plowed and salted. But,...the temperature quickly dropped below the point where the salt works and it made the roads as smooth as glass. Accidents everywhere. Just the wind was enough to push cars off the road. Ugly.
It was a good idea to close the road before people got killed.

It is boring in Kansas.

As another snow devil rolls across my back yard, I’m clicking my heels together. It’s not working. Maybe it’s because I’m wearing wooly socks instead of ruby slippers.

My ride to work was 2½ hours today. Roads were such a mess. If I knew, I would have stayed home a few hours, but of course, I didn’t really know until I was out on the road, fishtailing. The cop at work told me that the roads were not prepared (salted) and by this morning when the snow was coming down quickly, many of the plow guys were not able to even make it in to work, so it was even worse.

@LuckyGuy Huh. You must be using different salt than we are?

@dappled_leaves They use regular rock salt down to about 20 F. Below that they use Calcium chloride. It used to be called “hot load”. I don’t know what the latest and greatest mix is today.

As of 6:30 pm the Thruway was still closed from Rochester to Buffalo. Incredible.
Update: I just checked, 8:50 pm and the T-way is open from Roch to Buffalo but still closed from Buffalo to Canada and Erie PA.

@LuckyGuy So crazy! Are there other routes people can take so they’re not stranded for days? How often does this happen?