Cold snap January 2024 - Fort Collins, CO - keeping things from freezing

Wayne

Wayne

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Staff member
The cold that has been predicted for about a week is almost here.

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We have three 1,500 watt resistance heaters, two in the living area and one on the basement, and 180 lbs of propane. It's about 14°F now and with all three electric heaters running, the furnace hasn't turned on for hours. The electric heaters are all on thermostats and cycle on and off. It's supposed to be about -10°F by 6:00AM and a high of 2°F tomorrow. One model calls for the overnight low Tuesday close to here at -45°F. I sure hope it doesn't get that cold. The good thing is the high Tuesday is 28°F and it gets better from there in the 10 day forecast. Three days of bitter cold isn't that bad and I'm glad it's not three weeks.

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The only water that runs under the floor and above the tanks is the kitchen sink, all other water is in the basement area. The cold water in the kitchen sink will freeze overnight below about 10°F, but the hot doesn't freeze. I'm planning on letting both the cold and hot drip. We'll see if it freezes.
 
Wayne, have you ever used to Mesowest to find local stations in any area or the USA?
if you figure out how to use it every single weather station in the USA down to the local civilian stations
that are built to professional scientific standard are linked on this website.

 
MSCH said:
Wayne, have you ever used to Mesowest to find local stations in any area or the USA?
if you figure out how to use it ever single weather station in the USA down to the local civilian stations
that are built to professional scientific standard are linked on this website.

Click to expand...
I'm a weather geek and never knew about that site! Thank you.
 
First lesson learned when it's super cold. You can't leave the Y-splitter on the hydrant. We forgot to leave the faucet drip for about an hour today and the metal Y froze up solid. Removing and pouring a bit of hot water over the end of the heated hose was all it took to get the water flowing. It got down to -15°F last night and it was about -10° when we forgot to leave the faucet dripping. The hose is heated and the hydrant is heated, but it’s not enough heat to keep the Y from freezing if there is no flow.

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Don't forget to pull the foam collar up to cover the end of the hose. The Camco kit comes with two foam collars to cover the ends.
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It was supposed to get up to 6°F today, but only got up to -5°F. Tonight the temperature is supposed to be -15°F again. Monday night -20°F, then relief.
 
Wayne said:
I'm a weather geek and never knew about that site! Thank you.
Click to expand...
yeah, it takes some playing with it to figure out how to use it
once you click on any area you are interested in
on the left side of the menu if you click change it to "All Networks" and click refresh
it will pull up every single linked weather station in that area of interest.
if you go to the top toolbar and change the settings to "Current Weather Summary" and hit GO
then change it to all networks ( upper left side of page, it will automatically have went to NWS)
you can pull up a county by county list of every weather station in all the counties in the chosen area.
then if you click on any of the weather stations it will bring up that station .
I found the website when I was using regular NWS and it was totally by accident.
took me awhile to figure out how to use it..
you can find NWS, FAA, RAWS,CWOP( CWOP are civilian weather observation platforms ) and other governmental weather stations on the Mesowest..

there is also a website called RAWS. remote automated weather stations.. Mesowest has RAWS stations on it
RAWS only has RAWS stations.
I have a RAWS station near my house in the FLA Panther Refuge, its maybe 5 miles from my house so it is perfect for me.
lots of neat stuff if you are a weather geek..

this is the RAWS home page, just click on a state and it will show you the individual stations and you just click on any of them to
pull them up.

 
MSCH said:
once you click on any area you are interested in
on the left side of the menu if you click change it to "All Networks" and click refresh
it will pull up every single linked weather station in that area of interest.
if you go to the top toolbar and change the settings to "Current Weather Summary" and hit GO
then change it to all networks ( upper left side of page, it will automatically have went to NWS)
you can pull up a county by county list of every weather station in all the counties in the chosen area.
Click to expand...
Do you have to be logged on? I'm not seeing those options.
 
Wayne, it is open to everybody... free.
once you get in there find a menu on the top where you can change areas and pages
as well as on the left side there will also be a indivdual menu.
like I said, you are going to have to play with it to figure it out as I do't think it is aimed at civilians.
this Mesowest page is much easier to view on a PC than a smartphone
 
I see now. This is a really neat website. All information and no fluff
 
Wayne said:
I see now. This is a really neat website. All information and no fluff
Click to expand...
the more you work with it, the more you will find. Like I said , I found it by accident a few years ago
and it took me some time to figure it out
but if you are a weather geek, its excellent..
in your case it has Colorado DOT SNONET,CoAgMet,NWS/FAA etc
there is all sorts of stuff on there, precipitation monitors, wind, solar etc depending on the weather station
have fun.
every state is on there too.
 
MSCH said:
the more you work with it, the more you will find.
Click to expand...
It is very cool. I pretty much only use wunderground, but since The Weather Channel bought it, then sold it to IBM, it's really gone downhill. I like the NWS site, but it has some brokenness that's inexcusable in my opinion. I never use The Weather Channel or similar big media weather sites, as they are too bloated with stuff that isn't weather data.
 
Wayne said:
It is very cool. I pretty much only use wunderground, but since The Weather Channel bought it, then sold it to IBM, it's really gone downhill. I like the NWS site, but it has some brokenness that's inexcusable in my opinion. I never use The Weather Channel or similar big media weather sites, as they are too bloated with stuff that isn't weather data.
Click to expand...
the beauty of the Mesowest is every weather recording platform in any area in the USA is on it if it transmits data..
its just a matter of figuring out the website and finding a particular station in your area of interest..
for instance when a hurricane hits a given area, my urge to see what is going on in landfall areas will have me pulling up data from any station I can find in particular are.
once you get familiar with the Mesowest, you realize you can check past data on any particular station just by changing the date and hitting refresh and it will pull up that particular day's data.
l
 
Three more nights of this cold snap, then we get back to much warmer weather. -20 is slightly insane.

Interestingly, since this cold snap started, we have only burned about 35 pounds of propane. I don't know how much electricity we have used, but my estimate is 100 KWh/day, which is about $15/day.

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That's a well built trailer you've got. Very few can operate at 0 much less -20. The mobile RV repair guy is going to be busy again.
 
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