Loring Winter and so it begins

[DavidC]

No boating unless you mount it on ski's

Dave

 

[mwilson]

If you went to the other side of the lake with skis on, you could spread your arms and get blown back over here...note the flag.....

 

[mwilson]

200 miles in the freezing rain last night, defroster on full scorch just to keep bottom half of windshield thawed out. Eyeballs felt like squeezed grapes...

About 60 miles in it got so I couldn't see in front, only a faint glow from the foglights...got safely off the interstate on a exit / on ramp and the headlights had about an inch of dirty brown ice covering them up. Had to bust it off, did so gently as I am not fond of pounding on $1200.00 headlight units......

This is how it looked when I stopped in Bangor, a lot had fallen off.....

What a screwed up winter so far....

 

[DavidC]

Not the kind of winters they had when I was there so far. Glad you made it safely.

 

[Jim W]

Mike, Glade you got there safely, boy I bet that was not fun drive in.

 

[mwilson]

It was not a good time....the studded Nokians proved their worth though...

No one left the road, all were driving carefully....sometimes 30 mph or so, but for the most part you could run about 50 mph...any faster and you couldn't keep the ice off the glass even with the defrost on full tilt.....

 

[TFucili]

Was it mid-90s when that epic ice storm came through, Mike? I remember getting there, and there were linemen from all over the country trying to get service restored. Miles and miles of transmission line down.

 

[mwilson]

Was it mid-90s when that epic ice storm came through, Mike? I remember getting there, and there were linemen from all over the country trying to get service restored. Miles and miles of transmission line down.

1998 I think.....it was a total mess...

 

[mwilson]

https://www.pressherald.com/2018/01...ht-extraordinary-destruction-and-cooperation/

 

[mwilson]

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[mwilson]

Had several deaths from Carbon Monoxide poisoning during that storm...people were running gensets and space heaters inside where they had no business doing so.
I put a lot of hours on my genny during that storm, but never ran it while we were sleeping....shut it down at bedtime and bring it in the garage....

 

[JR]

The last 3 weeks has been so unseasonably warm here my Asian pears and peach trees have started budding. Even my wild blackberry bushes - which are typically late bloomers - have green shoots coming off them .


Its going to make for a bad year here, especially the large apple orchards and vineyards. A real shame.

 

[TFucili]

Had several deaths from Carbon Monoxide poisoning during that storm...people were running gensets and space heaters inside where they had no business doing so.
I put a lot of hours on my genny during that storm, but never ran it while we were sleeping....shut it down at bedtime and bring it in the garage....

Yup, it's not funny, but I remember watching the news in the motel in Ashland, and some guy figured his fuel line was frozen, so he was heating a pot of gasoline on the stove. It didn't end well.

 

[mwilson]

This should make you guys feel cold.....

 

[mwilson]

 

[mwilson]

Car wash closed all weekend, too cold to operate it. Doesn’t matter, everything would freeze shut if you did wash it..

So Hoopty Deux gets to marinate in calcium for a couple days, got this layer of goo when going to Houlton and back yesterday...

 

[DavidC]

Looks like a RUST recipe.

 

[TFucili]

Mike, are they going hog wild with mag-chlor there? Before I moved they were spraying it on the salt in the spreader trucks, and they would pre-treat the roads with it before a flake was even seen. It made the roads slimey and more slippery than if they were bare. Plus, very, very difficult to wash off.

 

[mwilson]

Mike, are they going hog wild with mag-chlor there? Before I moved they were spraying it on the salt in the spreader trucks, and they would pre-treat the roads with it before a flake was even seen. It made the roads slimey and more slippery than if they were bare. Plus, very, very difficult to wash off.

They have modified the treatment several times, and used different materials....Hog Urine, Cheese making by-products, now talking about beet juice like Canada is using..

They have not pre-treated for at least a year, I don't know what happened there.

The current stuff works fairly well, but they have learned how and when to apply it. Done correctly the roads will be bare shortly after the storm ends...if they wait too long the snow will pack down and you wind up running on an inch or better of ice like we are now where it dropped off super cold right after the storm.

That coating on the car is a combination of the crap I ran in Friday going up North and the straight rock salt they were dumping on the Maine Turnpike Tuesday night during the ice storm....poor car...

 

[mwilson]

This morning....