Cold. Don’t know how cold when I am writing this but I know it will be cold. Also, relatively damp. ‘cuz Houston… it was 20F when I went to sleep and that is pretty dang cold in Houston. Don’t know what it got down to at the BOL, I’ll probably find out later today. No precip in Houston.
I guess I’ll also find out if the outdoor water heater survived. Kinda forgot about that, since this was our first weather event since we installed it. It is outside the building envelope and not very well protected from cold. Nothing I was willing to do at 1 am. when I thought about it.
I had a pretty normal day yesterday, probably should have done more cold prepping. Instead I got my antenna tower (it’s in good shape, a couple of minor things will need fixing, and the missing stuff will need to be ordered, but otherwise- never installed.) Wife got mom from the airport. I went grocery shopping, we did some half-hearted preps, and spent the night decorating the tree and wrapping presents. I’ll deal with aftermath later.
Worst case, if the heater is trashed, I’ll bring the propane one from the BOL home, and temp it into the plumbing while we find a replacement. TOTALLY don’t want to do that, but missed the boat on weatherizing it. It was working at 1am.
If the grid holds together, it’ll prove we can still do maintenance and planning. If not, we’re skiing down the slope. I’m hoping for “holds together.”
But I also know/believe we are on the slope, headed downhill, and accelerating. Any gains will be local and short lived.
So stack the things you will need for a while. Be flexible, and resourceful. Plan to survive.
nick