I'm guessing everyone has been following the Bee Gee directive and has been Stayin' Alive?

I've been trying to chip ice off everything about every day.  We had snow that turned into rain that froze.  When I step on the snow, I sink down about half an inch.

Heat is still on and water is still running.  I've been wondering about the water for the last week.

Quote from: wolf_from_wv on January 29, 2026, 10:00:19 PMI'm guessing everyone has been following the Bee Gee directive and has been Stayin' Alive?

I've been trying to chip ice off everything about every day.  We had snow that turned into rain that froze.  When I step on the snow, I sink down about half an inch.

Heat is still on and water is still running.  I've been wondering about the water for the last week.

We don't even sink.  It looks like snow with a layer of ice on top, but it's really just solid ice all the way down.  

I'm amused by the porch cam video that appears around six seconds on this news report:
https://www.12onyourside.com/video/2026/01/28/unplowed-church-hill-road-causes-several-crashes/

We're expecting more this weekend from the "bomb cyclone".  

As for water, we had the Richmond Water Crisis around this time last year when the Richmond water plant suffered a catastrophic pump failure and we were without potable water for about ten days and without water at all for most of that.  It was certainly a concern this time, but they managed to keep the water on so far.  

Even after that event just a year ago, so many people here don't keep extra water on hand and the stores were bought out ahead of the storm.  It's wild to me how little survival instinct so many have, even after personal experience.  

We had a bit of a prep fail here on DarkAxel road. I didn't have enough gas on hand for my generator. Thankfully we were only without power for around 20 hours and the genny ran for 17 of them. I also didn't have as much propane on hand as I thought I did, and we had to use some of it in the basement to thaw out the water lines (when the power goes out we lose all water pressure because there's no backup power for the pumping station at the base of the hill we live on). We ran out of propane Tuesday evening. Thankfully we had our power back on so I could break out the electric space heaters for our bedrooms. Wednesday morning I called the county garage to ask them to send a plow up our road (It hadn't been plowed or salted since the start of the storm Saturday). They came out, scraped and salted our road, and they brought us some propane to warm up the house until the salt had a chance to melt the ice enough to safely drive on the road.

Water for drinking and flushing the toilet was a prep win. I had 28 gallons of drinking water on hand, and we ran the bathtub full of water to flush the toilet. Food was another prep win. Same with meds for the family.

They are calling for a lot of snow this weekend, and we are in much better shape this time. We've got enough propane to last a little over a week with the heaters on full blast, and we have enough genny fuel on hand to match. I also bought the multi-fuel kit for the genny, and we can now use propane, diesel, and kerosene to run it if needed. I also now have the tools to turn our water off at the meter and added a spigot to it, so if the power goes out again I can turn the water off and drain the lines. I also have non-toxic antifreeze to pour down in the traps of our drains to protect them. I also got more pet food, as we almost ran out of cat and dog food before I could get to town. 

I've identified a few things that worked out but could have been better. My camp stove is one of the little ones that runs on esbit tabs, and it was a cast-iron SOB to cook enough food for 4 people on it. I'm getting a butane or propane gas camp stove large enough to handle cooking a family-sized meal as soon as I can. I'm also planning on installing wiring and outlets for an emergency power system that will be wired directly to the genny. We have been using extension cords with it which limits what we can run on it, and if we had emergency wiring we could have used the space heaters the night we went without grid power. I NEVER run space heaters on extension cords. I also want to get some non-flammable heat sources like Hot Hands and something similar to MRE heaters. 

I guess it got down to -2 last night.  I had to get the hair dryer and thaw the commode supply line out,