What are your FREEZE stories?
We’re stuck here on the ranch and trying to get a feel for what’s going on out there. Plus it would be great reading some of the stories you all have gone/going through.
2 days ago we moved all our sheep into the barn/workshop. We had to set up segregation stalls with portable fence to keep the ram away from his sisters. It’s pretty cramped but their ears would frostbite. We moved all the ducks into our garage, cramped and smelly, BAD!!!
We’ve had daytime highs in the low teens and nights 0-5. I know you folks up north who are used to this and it doesn’t sound like a big deal but we are experiencing temperatures 50-60 degrees below our normal temps. To put this into perspective, back in Ohio our normal low was about 25 this time of year, with this said it would put the low down to about -25 or -35. We didn’t even have it that cold back in 78 during the blizzard, yuck.
We lost our waterline between the house and well house. We had to adjust the red light in the well house to heat the regulator, now at least we have water out the spigot on the side of the well house to fill 5 gallon buckets to use inside. At least 4000 feet of irrigation pipe is ruined/will bust upon thaw. The big river on the ranch is completely frozen over, we’ve NEVER seen that happen before, EVER.
We are one of the lucky ones as we have power vs. 1 out of 2 people do NOT have power. It went out 2 days ago for our daughter/husband and they said it won’t be back on until AFTER tomorrow. They are suburban and we are rural, go figure.
At work there has been no power, (the alarm tells us when power is out, otherwise we’d never know) there is no insulation in the floor and that building is on pier and beam. Why have floor insulation when the low rarely gets into the 30’s? I’m sure we’ve lost every pipe there as well as the water softener. We’ll have to replace 10 acres of irrigation line as well. Like here at the ranch, irrigation lines at most are an inch or so underground and there is always surface exposure here and there.
Only a handful of the major grocery stores will remain open again today, from 12-5pm. But shelves are empty.
Cell towers are down in many spots as they have no power and once they ran out of propane for backup gens, they stopped working.
