CNN is losing its shiznit over a winter storm in the northeastern United States, amounting (so far) to 13" of snow and predicted wind-chill temperatures (not actual air temperatures) as low as -15°F. I have some news for CNN, please click to embiggenate:
Please note that the units are in Fahrenheit, nowhere near so warm as freezing, and ‘wind-chill’ values are not given. (According to the NWS wind-chill calculator, the Dec 30 figures of -11°F with a 14mph wind amounted to -33°F wind chill. The Jan 1 numbers worked out to a balmy -31°F wind chill.) I put some of the contents of my overstuffed freezer into the back of my truck because it's colder there than in the freezer. But this is southern Minnesota; Frostbite International Falls is far worse. Minnesota winters are not for tender northeastern wussies.
And the beat goes on: The current temperature here is 3°F, down to -12°F tonight with wind chill to -18°F. The rest of the month doesn't look good, either; we might get up to just south of freezing this weekend, but then back to our arctic reality.
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A friend's furnace rolled over and played dead two days ago. She fortunately had a couple of electric heaters handy and I was able to scrounge a couple more, enough to keep her house livable and the water pipes unfrozen. My volt meter and iPad (Hooray for the Internet!) identified a permanently toasted temperature overlimit (!) switch, and the tech who finally showed up this morning (!) attributed that failure to a maladjusted and thus terminally over-hot burner. The problem might never have manifested if outside air temperatures had been anywhere near reasonable so that the burner wasn't almost permanently on.
Welcome to life on the frozen tundra.
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