Santa Sends a Bomb Cyclone for Christmas

People say I'm a weather worrier.  I admit that I have an interest in extreme or threatening weather conditions.  My property sits on the edge of nowhere and so I like to be prepared.  My grandmother and her brother were the same way.  I have the weather worry gene I guess.  So, two weeks ago I wanted to see what the forecast was for Christmas day.  I know where to go online to get a decent 14-day outlook.  I was shocked by what I saw coming.

Jennifer and I were driving over to my parents (we feed them on Wednesday nights as they are elderly) I mentioned to her that I hoped the forecast would change but...frigid temperatures were predicted around Christmas.  I kept checking in the days ahead and, indeed the forecast did change.  It got worse.  Every time I brought up I got little response.  There were plenty of daily concerns and I was always worrying about the weather.

I checked our new heat pump's “emergency heat” mode (heat pumps are almost worthless when it is this cold).  I called the owner of the heating service (we bought our first house from him and have known him a long time).  He had no clue anything unusual was coming.  He was surprised when he saw what was predicted.  “I can't send service techs out when its that cold,” he told me, speaking mainly of the nightly temperatures.  “You know what,” he continued, “let 'er rip.  It's just money in the bank for me.”  We laughed.  Indeed, I expect his service people will be swamped with calls.

The last time it got this cold my water pressure regulator ruptured under my house.  So, I called my plumbing guy.  He was surprised by what I was telling him.  He really appreciated me giving him a heads up though and worked me in quickly to check the pipe insulation and install a heating cable that I bought from Home Depot before everyone knew this was coming.  My plumber thanked me because he was able to buy all sorts of parts that he would need later when people's pipes froze up.  If he had waited until everybody knew about it then he might not be able to get those parts.  It had happened to him before when he was new to his business.

So, yeah, I am concerned about the weather when it is historic and possibly wicked outside.  Because of my efforts my heating service guy and my plumber were both planning ahead when they had not even known what was coming.  The reason no one knew is because everyone is used to looking at the standard seven-day forecast.  By looking out 14 days, I knew something most people didn't.

This type of anxiousness on my part understandably drives my wife and daughter crazy.  But, hey, I don't control the weather.  As it finally made it into the seven-day forecast the news media started picking it up.  They were calling it a bomb cyclone.  It is also known as "bombogenesis."  I had never heard either of those terms.  Basically, it is when the temperature drops dramatically in a very short span of time.  It happens almost every year in the US but it rarely dips this far south. 

Some will start hollering and jumping up and down that cold weather like this disproves climate change.  This is a rather predictable response from deniers.  In fact, climate change increases the possibility of these events.  This particular bomb cyclone is partly caused by unusually high pressure hovering over Greenland, a symptom of global warming.

Early tomorrow morning, while we are hopefully sleeping, the temperature is supposed to drop from the mid-40's into the teens in a matter of a couple of hours.  This will be accompanied with gusty winds of up to 25 mph and a steady winds of about 10 -15 mph.  The wind chill will then kick in and really drive temperatures down as the arctic blast hammers almost the entire country.

Over the next three days 300 million people will be affected.  Freezing temperatures will drive into Florida and the wind chill is supposed to get as low as minus 20 degrees - HERE.  AT MY HOUSE!  SO YEAH I'M WORRIED ABOUT THIS!  1994 was the last time the wind chill drove the temperature this low here.  We had just built our house.  Our water meter froze and we were without water for two days.  We lived i the middle of nowhere back then.  Now, with all the residential development nearby we are only on the edge of nowhere.

Yesterday Jennifer finally accepted the gravity of the situation and we both worked to winterize the house.  I go into my crawlspace periodically to change the air filter on our the intake duct of our unit.  I don't normally crawl all around under there because it is a tight space with a lot of pipes, drains, cob webs, dust, and duct work to do gymnastics around.  But, I did yesterday and was glad of it.  

I found random pieces of insulation laying under there that I had forgotten about.  I fashioned some of it to cover my crawlspace vents from the inside.  I also found a 10 foot section of insulated duct work that was just laying there.  I pulled it out from under the house and we used pieces of it for various things.

Many years ago I cut some rectangular fittings out of scrap carpet padding to cover my house vents from the outside.  I trimmed pieces of wire clothes hangers certain lengths so that they would wedge into the frame of the vents to hold the carpet padding in place.  In addition to closing my vents, the padding ensures that the wind doesn't leak through even a little bit.  That is usually not necessary.  My house can handle cold weather for a night or two as long as it warms up during the daytime.  But this is a bomb cyclone.  We are in for three days of below freezing temperatures with a howling wind.  That's a ridiculous amount of time that people in north Georgia are just not prepared for.

I called my neighbor to ask if he would make his water meter tool available to me.  It comes in handy if you need to cut the water flow into the house due to possible pipe bursts, such as what happened with my water pressure regulator years ago.  He was well aware of the situation and was winterizing too, not only his house but his mother-in-law's and other family members nearby.  He is much more of a handyman than I am. 

I told him about my water meter bursting back in 1994.  It is susceptible to wind chill because, though it sits in the ground, it is located high on the bank down by the road.  Westerly winds directly hit it.  Normally this is not a problem but when it is going to be this cold and windy for this long it is a huge issue.  He understood.

As life had it my mother-in-law's day sitter was out sick yesterday so I had to go over there to help her out during the morning.  I planned to winterize the meter in the afternoon.  But to my pleasant surprise my neighbor called and told me he had insulated my meter while I was away.  I thanked him profusely.  It was such a generous thing to do but not uncommon among rural neighbors.

I repaid the favor later in the day by giving him most of the insulated duct work I pulled out from under my house.  Jennifer and I used some of it to cover our water meter completely, on top of what my neighbor had done.  This would block the wind entirely from hitting the meter (hopefully).  We wrapped some of the insulation in large plastic garbage bags and then staked and cross-tied it down to completely shield the meter.

My neighbor had mentioned that he had all these other folks he needed to do something for so he was appreciative when I gave the rest of the insulated duct work, about six feet.  He used that to cover the meters and exposed areas of a few other houses.  So crawling under my house went partly to the benefit of others.  I felt good about that.

Last night I told Jennifer, that I felt “better” about the situation.  I felt we had done all we could do.  Today I double-checked everything.  We are hunkered down for tonight's bomb.  Jennifer went to get her mother to bring her over to the house for the next few nights, until this deep freeze passes.  I got a call from her about mid-afternoon.

“Houston we have a problem,” she said.  Her mother's water meter, which we had saved some insulation to cover, was in standing water.  She had a freakin' leak.  I called our plumber and left a message.  I also sent him a text.  Also, her heat pump had been acting up recently and we couldn't decide whether or not to put the system in emergency heat mode.  The house would be vacant with no one to monitor it.

I called our service tech and managed to actually get him.  I told him about the situation and he said he was driving by that neighborhood anyway, he would stop and check it out.  Then the plumber miraculously returned my call and said he would go over.  What are the odds of getting two service techs to come address different issues at the last minute, literally at the same time on the same day?!

Fortunately the leak in the water line was an easy fix.  The heating guy discovered that one of the emergency heat strips was not properly connected.  Literally within a hour's time we went from near-panic mode to everything being resolved to the best of our ability.  What a roller coaster!  Now, we are settling her mom into our house with our daughter and three dogs, waiting for this terrible weather event to strike us sometime early tomorrow morning.

Jennifer and I are both emotionally spent and the frigid front has not even arrived yet.  Our fingers are crossed and we are hoping for the best.  Hoping her mom's house will be okay, that we don't lose electricity at my house, lose the internet, or lose our phones (which depend on the internet connection because of our house is situated in a cell tower dead zone).  Here we are, on the edge of nowhere, and right now it feels like we are tethered so precariously.  

Like all our neighbors we are hunkered down, somehow planning to make Christmas happen despite the coldest temperatures my daughter has ever seen in her lifetime.  She is supposed to have a small party with her cousins over here tomorrow night, when the coldest temperatures hit us.  I hope we can look back on this one day and laugh.  But I don't feel like laughing right now.  I am planning to enjoy some eggnog and cashews tonight though and try to get a good night's sleep.  

It seems the whole country has been naughty this year with this chilling early present from Santa Claus.  

Late Note:  Dec. 27 – On Christmas Eve morning it was 9 degrees here, which was the lowest temperature for my area since 1985.  I was in India then.  The wind-chill reached minus 8, which was not as bad as predicted but plenty cold enough for our tastes.  Mid-afternoon on the day after Christmas we lost power.  It affected 18,000 people locally.  Several substations went out.  Fortunately, the temp had climbed up to a balmy 34 degrees that day.  Jennifer's mother had stayed with us during the three days we spent below freezing and we had just taken her back home when it happened.  

Electricity was restored in about three hours so we did not have to gather her things and bring her back here.  We used a small propane heater for supplemental heat and had it on hand for just such an occasion.  We burned through one small tank of fuel and started another over the three days.  There was a light snow last night but it was not enough to cause any problems.  The worst is over.  It is supposed to warm up now and be 60 degrees with rain on New Year's Eve.