Arctic Blast...

[markojp]

Some of the footage on the new is shocking. So much misery and suffering. So sad to see the human tragedy side of this.

This is a screen grab off one of the video clips showing people waiting in line to fill their propane tank in freezing temps.
We, as a society, should be better than this.

Quoted for profound truth.

 

[Seldomski]

Almost scary but 0 power loss up here with our Co-Op power supplier, we are not part of the ERCOT Texas grid.

Yeah if you are on ERCOT you are screwed. El Paso left the grid last time this happened and is laughing at the rest of the state.

There is a whole range of nonsense going on in San Antonio. Power is not being reliably supplied to water services and so people are losing water as well since pumps are not working. Now there is a boil water notice out due to how badly things have been compromised/contaminated. So how to boil water with no power?

"Working from home" isn't really happening. Can't drive to office since roads are too dangerous. Can't remote in because power is unreliable, and when it is up, the ISP may be down because they aren't getting power. Remote school is canceled since students can't feasibly maintain connections.

Theoretically all over in a couple days? Our power now on something like 6 hrs on 6 hrs off schedule, but none of this is communicated.

 

[Sibhusky]

So glad that the generator we ordered last March was finally put in last month. There were backorders because of the fires in California. Now Texas will getting in line.

 

[scott43]

You know, when you buy a car, they're all tested at extreme temperatures..they try to find every single thing that goes wrong at cold temps. I asked my buddy at Honda why the Odyssey had the sliding door slit in the body instead of in the window frame like in Toyotas. He said, well, they ice up and seize the door when they're in the window frame. People will pay for this stuff.

 

[scott43]

Best wishes to you guys in the heartland.
I'm going to try to drive through this from Wash DC to Utah on Feb 16 & 17. I'm hoping the worst ice is south of my route which includes a long stretch on I80, but WV could be tough early tomorrow.

@Jim Kenney did you make it?

 

[Tex]

I know a guy on a ranch in Texas, he can see 300 of those wind turbines and said not a one of them was turning the other day. Too bad, that strong north wind should have been cranking out some energy! Sounds like to me from what I been reading, just over all equipment failure on all sources of energy (including natural gas) because they were just not "winterized" and froze up.

 

[cantunamunch]

I know a guy on a ranch in Texas, he can see 300 of those wind turbines and said not a one of them was turning the other day. Too bad, that strong north wind should have been cranking out some energy! Sounds like to me from what I been reading, just over all equipment failure on all sources of energy (including natural gas) because they were just not "winterized" and froze up.

I heard one of the reactors went off line also. Not something I am comfortable having un-winterized.

 

[KingGrump]

I heard one of the reactors went off line also. Not something I am comfortable having un-winterized.

Frozen water pumps. Not a good thing.

They can keep things running in MT, ND and MN in the middle of the winter. There is a lesson in this somewhere.
A balmy day in MT. On our way from Big Sky to Lake Louise - 10:00 am with the sun up.

 

[doc]

just over all equipment failure on all sources of energy (including natural gas) because they were just not "winterized" and froze up.

That it did; my company operates a large number of oil and gas wells in West Texas and most of them froze up completely at one point or another. We are not prepared for weather/temps of this nature, and likely never will be. Nearly every well has experienced wellhead freeze-offs where the low temps crystallize the water that is naturally produced along with the nat gas which blocks the wellhead, trapping production in the ground. In West Texas, the nat gas has a very high liquids (nat gas liquids and water) which elevates the risk of hydrates forming and freeze-offs resulting, as compared to nat gas production in some other areas. In addition, when wells are fracked, many thousands of gallons of water are pumped into the formation, some of which remains in formation and some of which returns to the surface, and freezes, as we have seen. The hydrates in the nat gas also collect in well chokes, pipelines and valves and, worse the hydrate molecules encapsulate one another in diamond shapes making them harder to melt than normal ice. Further, water which gets to the surface is collecting in (limited) storage tanks, which fill and can freeze, which will trigger and automatic production shut-down. There are techniques, and equipment, which can combate hydrates in the gas stream but you probably don't want to hear what they are. To make matters worse, once the gas stream freezes up so too do the crude oil and natural gas liquids from the well. It will take a long stretch of consistently warm weather to unstick the system and removes the hydrates from the gas stream.
Can this result be avoided? Perhaps, but at great expense and for an industry that is a price-taker rather than a price-maker, there is very little margin for increasing production-related expenses to account for a once-every-100 year event.

 

[Ogg]

^ There seem to be an awful lot of "once every hundred year" weather events happening in recent years.

 

[cantunamunch]

^ There seem to be an awful lot of "once every hundred year" weather events happening in recent years.

True, but the price-taker vs. price-maker point is well taken - especially if there is little (heating) demand for natural gas and the electricity price is being made by solar + wind which ironically require gas backup for their offline periods. Cheap plentiful solar -> unwinterized gas supply.

 

[scott43]

We design storm water infrastructure around the "100 year storm", which in our case is Hurricane Hazel from 1954. We've exceeded that level of precipitation 3 times in the last 10 years... When Calgary flooded in 2013 they started looking at the 100 year flood level mapping..by the end of the flood they were looking at the 700 year flood level mapping. Alberta, indeed all of Canada, will be looking at Texas in reverse. Many locations in Canada aren't prepared for what seems to be higher-volume more frequent rain events and higher temperatures. We will have to look at our warm weather preparations..40C weather is unheard of here..it could become normal in many locations.

 

[cantunamunch]

We design storm water infrastructure around the "100 year storm", which in our case is Hurricane Hazel from 1954. We've exceeded that level of precipitation 3 times in the last 10 years... When Calgary flooded in 2013 they started looking at the 100 year flood level mapping..by the end of the flood they were looking at the 700 year flood level mapping. Alberta, indeed all of Canada, will be looking at Texas in reverse. Many locations in Canada aren't prepared for what seems to be higher-volume more frequent rain events and higher temperatures. We will have to look at our warm weather preparations..40C weather is unheard of here..it could become normal in many locations.

From an economic standpoint, it would be extremely interesting if that resulted into a population redistribution back into city cores.

 

[scott43]

From an economic standpoint, it would be extremely interesting if that resulted into a population redistribution back into city cores.

It's interesting. We already have a generally more dense city core model. Like Boston or New York. Not like some of the mid-west cities that sprawl a great deal. And all of the storm infrastructure was based on that 1954 storm. So when we get significant flooding they blame "aging infrastructure" or "poorly designed infrastructure" when in fact, it's performing as-designed. It's simply being overwhelmed by a larger storm event that it was designed for. So the question becomes, how do you upgrade that infrastructure at any kind of reasonable cost? Takes years..it all does have to be replaced at some point..but you can't just go do it all. And because we have that greater density, we do have a reasonably good position to be able to pay for it. I don't know what you do with places like Cleveland, Columbus, St. Louis..where you have significant sprawl and derelict neighbourhoods. I don't know how paying for those huge infrastructure changes happens.

The other somewhat ironic thing is that most cities were built around bodies of water for various reasons..transport..drinking water..sewage.. And now those cities are at greater risk of these flood events. Calgary is a prime example..flat land at the confluence of two rivers. Winnipeg..same..

It's interesting, you couldn't pay someone to live in downtown Toronto in the 80's. It's almost unrecognizable now with the number of condo units that have been built down there, all in the last 20 years. And now, with Covid and WFH, there has been a migration to more suburban and rural areas. Nobody wants to live in a 400 sq. ft. condo anymore when the prime benefit, no commute, disappears. So now house prices in Toronto continue to rise at about a 10% annual rate..and rural properties more than an hour outside the city have started to increase at about a 30% annual rate. It's quite frankly mind-boggling. I don't know where the money comes from. I thought we did pretty good money-wise but we're out of this market.

 

[scott43]

Toronto 1998:

Toronto Today:

 

[DanoT]

I lived in downtown Toronto in the early 70s. I thought it was too big with too much traffic back then.

Metro Toronto has a larger population than B.C and B.C is Canada's 3rd largest province, both land and people.

 

[scott43]

We're planning our escape. It's great if you have a lot of money or have a business where you can take advantage of a lot of people. But if you're average folk, it's not spectacular. I used to be able to drive 30 mins after work to some of the best MTB'ing around. That's a 1-1.25hr drive now...impossible to do on a weekday.

 

[François Pugh]

We design storm water infrastructure around the "100 year storm", which in our case is Hurricane Hazel from 1954. We've exceeded that level of precipitation 3 times in the last 10 years... When Calgary flooded in 2013 they started looking at the 100 year flood level mapping..by the end of the flood they were looking at the 700 year flood level mapping. Alberta, indeed all of Canada, will be looking at Texas in reverse. Many locations in Canada aren't prepared for what seems to be higher-volume more frequent rain events and higher temperatures. We will have to look at our warm weather preparations..40C weather is unheard of here..it could become normal in many locations.

These are two different approaches. One approach is the biggest storm on record, which is Hurricane Hazel for southern Ontario and "the Timmins Storm" for northern Ontario; it varies with location. The other approach is the 100-year (or 50 year or whatever the powers that be decide on based on the consequences of exceeding the design) storm. The 100-year storm is obtained by analyzing a long record (say 40 years) and predicting what storm has a likelyhood of occurring in any given year of 1/100, based on fitting a distribution (usually a Log-Pearson III type distribution, but whatever one fits the data best).

The problem with the 100 year storm is the traditional methods for predicting the 100 year storm did not take into account climate change; they assumed stationarity, based on climate changes being relatively slow. Analyzing the most recent 40 years might give different results than analyzing the data they had in 1965 when they built some of the stuff that needs replacing. It's hard enough to make statistical predictions without building in change.

The problem with Hurricane Hazel is who's to say the biggest storm ever is not going to change to a new hurricane that hasn't happened yet? Not me. I predict it will be exceeded in my lifetime. Global warming is going to give us bigger hurricanes.

 

[scott43]

The problem with Hurricane Hazel is who's to say the biggest storm ever is not going to change to a new hurricane that hasn't happened yet? Not me. I predict it will be exceeded in my lifetime. Global warming is going to give us bigger hurricanes.

Hurricane Hazel was already exceeded. That was 126mm in 24 hrs..I personally got 130mm in 2 hours in July 2013. Out of the 20 or so houses on the street, only 2 didn't get significant (over 1') of water in the basement. It's not helped by our wonderful Toronto Concrete (glacial till..) whose drainage speed is measured in days...if not weeks.....

 

[Jim Kenney]

@Jim Kenney did you make it?

Yes, thanks for asking. I drove 2138 miles in two days, VA to a little motor court motel in MO, and MO to UT.
I can't help but file a mini trip report.
Its about 20 degs at my destination and about 15" of snow, which is deep for salt lake city suburbs. the sun is out today 2/18/21 and it's melting. up at snowbird/alta they got 4' in last 4 days. i saw snow on the ground all the way from md to ut. it was surprisingly deep in ohio, about one foot or more there and rest stops were not plowed, but it happened on monday and when i drove on tues and wed the interstates were pretty good, i did 70-80 mph all the way except for 4 or 5 snow squalls for 20-30 mins each along the way that slowed me down in wv, ne and wy. coldest temp i saw was tuesday night driving in western MO, minus 1 degs. across ne on wed is was single digits to about 14 degs during the day, but momentarily got up to 29 around cheyenne. i understand it snowed a good bit in the wash dc suburbs yesterday. this is a nationwide polar vortex thing going on.
1. rest stop on i 70 near dayton, oh
2. first good size mtns after miles and miles of prairie, near laramie, wy on i 80
3. view of the wasatch from slc suburbs 2/18/21