Posted on 11/01/2025 5:46:00 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The wind today was BITING! I’m kinda glad to hear you thought it felt cold, not because I want you to be cold, but because I am such a WIMP, and often I don’t even want to go outside when it’s like this. It will take me a few more weeks of 30’s and below to start to adjust. Then I’ll complain when it gets into the teens. When it gets to the zeroes and below, I have a really hard time about even going outside. Usually that only lasts for a week or ten days. These are the times when my Florida upbringing does not help me. It’s not SUNNY enough here!
Now they call it “climate change”, Diana!
Climate change, where change is the constant in the equation!
First of all, it IS colder here farther west & living at the foot of the mountains. In general, it seems spring is about a month later & fall a month earlier than at our previous home. Additionally, it is MUCH windier. The house is on a knoll so we catch any winds & winds are 5-10mph most days. Last week, gusts were 20-30 with some as high as 50+ mph. Leaves were flying, all mom’s decorative stuff on the porch & patio was knocked over, & some empty plastic pots from bushes I planted got blown out of the barn & I had to chase them across the yard! We even lost a small piece of siding trim off the peak of the roof.
Last week was not that bitter cold, but this week, when you don’t get out of the 30’s & that wind is blowing, then you get the wind chill factor. At our previous home, I could make it all winter with my outer layer a Columbia fleece jacket (a Goodwill find, BTW - I love that jacket!). That jacket isn’t enough here with the wind & colder temps so I had to buy a heavy duty ‘work’ coat at the Farm Bureau last winter. It’s still pretty ‘stiff’ so it’s going to take some washing & wearing to ‘break it in’. I have never had a coat that needed breaking in, but it sure felt good pumping gas yesterday with the wind howling across the parking lot!
Yesterday, I kept putting off going to the store because I just did not want to go out in the wind & cold. I finally went about 3:00. Sunset is a few minutes after 5 & as soon as the sun gets low, the temperature noticeably drops - I got home before that happened. “Warmer” temps will be here the rest of the week after our frigid cold snap with nights in the 30’s & days in the mid to upper 50’s which is almost balmy LOL. At the moment (7 AM) it’s “only” 34° instead of in the 20’s, but it feels like 28 with the wind chill .... brrrr!
Thanks, Pete! If so, that would explain the hinkey electrical problems I’ve had this past week!
Three small lamps in the house would flicker, as well as a night light in my bedroom. A plugged in clock radio in the Family Room kept turning off then flashing 12:00. The furnace would kick on, then kick off - with the flickering lights! I set it low, so it usually doesn’t kick in until the wee hours, and it was doing it at 4am. Partial power is out in the barn. The main lighting works, but the chicken coop and Stew’s luxury accommodations have no lighting.
I thought it was a loose wire due to all the wind we’ve had, blowing back in some warmth!
This morning, everything seems to be OK. I’ll wait before I call the power company - which I was going to do first thing.
No problems like that here! Well, one, actually. the thermostat in a quartz space heater in the otherwise unheated part of my shop had gone “intermittent” even with the thermostat set at the top of its range. The power cord and plug seemed fine, so, I unplugged the heater, pulled the cover off, and discovered a push-on connector to the thermostat not tight to the spade lug it pushes on to. That had cause arcing, damage to the connector and lug, and a poor connection.
I pulled the connector off, cut it off the wire, stripped the end of the wire, and removed the oxide from the stripped end of the wire. (Kinda tedious to do right, with finely stranded wire.) Then I scraped down to bare metal on the lug (harder to do, mostly because it was hard to access that part of the thermostat, and the thermostat knob refused to come off, so I couldn’t pull the thermostat out.) Then I passed the stripped end of the wire through the hole in the middle of the lug, gave that one “wrap”, and soldered the wire to the lug. Test @ both low power and hi power: Worked great. I checked all the other push-on connectors in the heater: None showed signs of arcing, but, I tightened up a few that seemed slightly loose, then reassembled everything & put the heater back in place.
I mention this because those darn push on connectors often get loose with time and thermal cycling. I guess they are used so whatever they are attached to can be replaced easily (if the dang knob will come off, in this case!) but my experience is that they are a frequent source of trouble in various types of equipment, especially if subject to thermal cycling and / or vibration, and if the female connector’s material(s) is(are) suspect.
As for wind, the nuts (mostly hickory and some walnuts) and a few small branches coming down yesterday were... “nuts!”
At least it’s bringing in warmer temperatures. We’ll go from 20 deg. F below normal to 20 deg. F above normal. :-)
I wonder if that would keep cats out of certain spots?
For the opposite, attracting them to certain spots, I tried getting catnip going this summer. It grew ok (in a “cage”) but never flowered / went to seed, so, I’m going to try to overwinter a couple plants “caged”.
Part of it is the breeding. One year, Rural mixed up some broiler breed with other chicks, and we ended up with a broiler hen. I called her “Big Girl”. She was huge - about 11 lbs. just before she died (early, at only 2 y/o.) Her eggs were infrequent, but many were well over 3 oz.
The bad thing was that B4 I realized the potential problem, as a chick she trampled a couple other chicks to death. :-(
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