United States 100 - car pile up near Fort Worth, TX

[Zachowon]

Hell, Ft Drum NY had to have a 5 day weekend last week because they had TO MUCH snow.

 

[f1onagher]

Texas, Oklahoma are having terrible winters, and a lot of the power is down cause of Green energy.

This pile up was the worst accident so far. We may be having multiple deaths reported come the end of the storm

About half of Texas' windmill froze over because they were not sufficiently winterized. The remainder overperformed when the wind was out, but we had a number of completely dead days. Solar has been useless for obvious reasons, one of the nuclear plants went down due to instrument malfunction, and a plurality to majority of our gas and oil plants have shut down due to frozen water pipes, lack of supply, or in a few ridiculous cases ERCOT, the organization responsible for Texas' grid, shut down a few plants early and now they're struggling to turn back on.

So it's not really the wind farms' fault. Hell, the only people that really screwed the pooch are ERCOT. Everyone else was just taken off guard by how bad this winter storm has been. It's in February for Sam's sake, things are usually warming up by now.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Yeah, I've not had water since the 11th now and the thaw won't set in until the 20th. I've been dealing with rolling blackouts as well. Annoying but I've been through these storms before and usually keep a couple months worth of food and couple week's water just in case.

My dirty dish situation, however, is starting to get critical. I was melting snow in my crockpot to make dishwater but the blackouts keeps it from running right and I can't risk it freezing and shattering so the dishes are piling up and I'm out of pans.

 

[DocSolarisReich]

It doesn't require 'killer' reflexes by any means. It does however, require good reflexes. If you're the sort who regularly stresses when driving and are likely to freeze up, don't try it.

If you're an accomplished driver, and respond quickly to changing circumstances, it can help you regain control in otherwise unrecoverable circumstances.

It’s the sort of thing I was able to do without consciously thinking about, purely on instinct and feeling my traction through the pedals and the wheel and after being stationed in Germany and driving a shitty stick shift Euro spec Ford Colt for years. Now I’m so far out of the game I wouldn’t attempt it.

 

[Captain X]

Up in the north land, it's pretty much just been cold, as in subzero, like normal. Though in the next few days we're supposed to be warming up to like 40 above, which is actually pretty unusual for this time of year. Usually up here it likes to stay near zero through about mid-March before it very slowly starts to warm up. May is when our very short Spring usually is.

 

[Bacle]

CO has gotten a bit of wintery weather, but nothing crazy, and it's supposed to be 60 F by Monday.

Seeing what has happened in Texas makes me cringe with sympathy, because of how Texas plates are on CO roads and I know how ill prepped a lot of Texan drivers are for this stuff, even with proper highway prep measures in place.

 

[f1onagher]

I have water and power again! My shower is still frozen, but I'm otherwise back to 100%. Running things cool for the next couple of days since the grid is still under strain, but I have my computer back so my shallow online existence can properly resume.

In the political sphere I'm annoyed at everyone since there are no gotchas to be had but everyone's digging them up anyway. The windfarms do yeoman's work during the summer and the fact that they failed during winter is not an indictment of green energy. Simultaneously neither capitalism nor fossil fuels screwed things up either. There was simply no reason to expect a cold storm this bad this late in the winter. A hypothetical government run energy grid would run things similarly at best. At least Texas' grid doesn't break down for every year heat like California's does. If anything all this has proven is that we need more nuclear plants and better winter emergency plans.

Interestingly this has been the highest demand on the grid since 2011 when we were at the height of a four year long drought.

 

[Husky_Khan]

To make matters worse... Alien visitation confirmed.

Alabama ‘Crop circles’ frozen into creek surface prompt debate

Meteorologist James Spann, of ABC 33/40, offered a slightly different explanation in a Facebook post.

www.al.com

 

[Zachowon]

Last year was wild fires in Australia, this year is Hell freezing over and aliens. AT THE SAME TIME