If the weather reports are to be believed we’re going to get hit hard from Sunday afternoon through Monday morning. It looks like the worse of this storm is going to hit us directly with a combination of freezing rain and heavy snow, with the possibility of up to 24 inches of snow total.
All the towns around here have already declared states of emergency and put on street parking bans into effect, businesses are already announcing closures, etc.
The thing is, though, I’m not sure any longer if I can believe anything the weather reports tell us. They’ve completely blown just about every forecast for significant weather events here for the entire winter. Predicted “massive snow storms” have turned into an hour or so of a rather gentle rain or a light dusting of snow.
Anyway, we’ll see. Come Monday if you see a selfie pop up here of an old, overweight, white haired bearded guy standing up to his eyebrows in a snowdrift, you’ll know the weather service finally got something right.
We’re about as ready for it as we can be here. The snowblower is gassed up and ready to go. The batteries for the solar power system are fully charged and those can carry the house for about 24 hours if the power goes out, and if that’s not enough, we have the old Generac generator and extra gasoline to recharge the batteries if we need to.
If we do get hammered, I am not optimistic about what’s going to happen to our power. Just some 50 mph wind gusts down in the Milwaukee area yesterday or the day before knocked out power to over 20,000 people. The last time we had a significant late season snowstorm it knocked out power to almost the entire northern third of the state for days in some areas. Sherwood, a small town about three miles from here, didn’t have power for 3 or 4 days, for heaven’s sake.
grouchyfarmer 
Good luck Grouchy.
We had an ice storm a little while back. We had 5″ of solid ice on the ground everywhere. It came down in spurts over a couple of days time. We were lucky it didn’t stick to the trees much or it would have been a hella disaster.
We prepped as well as we could for that one. But it wasn’t too bad here as far as winter storms go. Our power went out, but by the time I had made some cowboy coffee and had a couple of cups, the power came on again.
I use propane to cook shells with, and have 4 20 lb propane tanks. I bought one of those little Mr. Buddy indoor safe propane heaters after we got a $400 dollar light bill after that ice event. That little heater is amazing. I’ll run it anytime it’s cold enough for the furnace to kick on, and that heater does a great job of doing its job, which is to keep the furnace from kicking on. It makes a very pleasant heat, and the critters all jockey for front row seat. It will run on low for 5-6 days straight, 12 hours a day, on one 20 lb. tank. They claim you should not let it run all night, for fear it will use up all your oxygen, so I only let it run when I get up in the morning, and turn it off just before bed. On some pretty cold days, our furnace was quiet most of the time.
We have natural gas running right through here, I may try that route, I have to make some sort of change before next winter, after the electric co. raised the rate the way they did. We’ve never seen a bill like that. Don’t want to see another one.
Again, good luck man.
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We have natural gas here for heat which, so far at least, has been 100% reliable. And I have multiple sources of electricity ranging from the solar system’s batteries, the big old Generac generator, or a little Yamaha inverter-generator, and a Bluetti portable power station, all of which can keep the furnace going as long as we have NG. That Mr Buddy sounds neat, though. I wonder if I could get one big enough for the garage? Right now I just have an old kerosene torpedo heater which is utterly horrible in just about every way. I suspect it puts out enough carbon monoxide that I could use it to fumigate the garage when it’s running full bore.
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The one we have is the smaller unit, 4000 or 9000 BTU. It’s only rated for 225 sq ft. But it punches quite a bit better than that IMO.
They make one twice the size with the same look and low/med/high settings. It would of course use more fuel.
Once this thing has been up and running for a couple of hours, it keeps a good 1000 sq feet comfy. But that is in a well insulated home with double pane windows.
I bought it just to have something that made heat, in the face of an incoming ice storm. What we found was a little gem of a heater, that is, I hope, offsetting out light bill.
Anything that keeps the furnace quiet, is good my me.
A friend of mine insisted that natural gas is cheaper than propane, and since it is running down the road we live on, we should go that route. I haven’t investigated that scenario yet, but it’s on my list of things to do.
You should be up to your ears in blizzard conditions by now I guess, hope all goes well.
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That sounds like something I should look into. Natural gas service has been 100% reliable but in an emergency? If a tornado rolled through? The first they they do is shut down NG service to prevent explosions and fires.
NG is indeed cheaper than Propane, a lot cheaper. At least here. Prices vary all over the place. What always made me a bit leery of propane for home heating is that we’ve had shortages here in Wisconsin that have driven prices sky high in the past. A few years before we sold the family farm we had to replace the old fuel oil burning furnace and we put in propane because there was no pipeline close enough to tap into. The furnace itself worked brilliantly and costs were much, much less than fuel oil. But a year or two later we had propane shortages in the state that caused the prices to spike sky high. I had a yearly contract with the local co-op at a fixed price, but a lot of people were buying on the spot market to save a few cents and that backfired badly on them. During the shortage prices almost doubled for people who weren’t under contract, if they could get it at all. I talked to one fellow who thought he was smart to save a few cents by buying on the spot market. He ended up paying almost double and even then could only get enough gas for about 30 days.
The blizzard was pretty much over by noon on Monday, although the winds kept up until early evening. Our official total was 27 inches. Some parts of the state got as much as 3 feet for heaven’s sake. I was out and about earlier and while the roads are reasonably I was very glad the Buick has four wheel drive! Have to be very careful driving. The snowbanks are so high that you can’t see oncoming traffic at intersections until you pull halfway out into the road.
I have the biggest walk behind snowblower Ariens makes, with something like a 20 HP Kohler “Polar Vortex” engine and this is the first time I ever heard the thing have to work hard. Power it into a 5 foot tall snowdrift, pull back to let the sides collapse, then repeat. It pretty much paid for itself yesterday! Damn that thing is a beast! Ariens can’t make a decent lawnmower to save their lives. Their lawn tractors are rebranded Husqvarnas and their big commercial zeroturn equipment is made by Gravely. But their snowblowers? The bigger ones at least are real workhorses.
The biggest problem is no one knows where to go with the snow! The snowbanks along the streets here are taller than the cars are. So much snow in the parking lots that they can only plow about half of the spaces because they need to use the rest of the space to pile up the snow.
And this being Wisconsin, the temperatures are supposed to be up in the 50s by the weekend. Sigh… We went from 70 degrees, to 2 and a half feet of snow, and now back up to shirt sleeve temperatures in a few days? Sheesh…
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If you want a back up emergency plan for heat, these things are perfect. They don’t take up much space, and as I already mentioned, this one punches well above it’s 225 sq ft recommendation. That little rascal is running right now. Was down around freezing last night, and supposed to get to 60 today. But it ain’t there yet. The warmth this thing projects is addictive to all of us. Even the dogs and cats.
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