I hope that everyone stays safe during this bitter cold snap. Right now it is -3 in Youngstown, and feels like -24 with the wind chill. Please, if you have dogs or cats outside, please figure out a way to get them inside. It is simply too cold for these animals right now.

Please stay safe.

https://poweroutage.us/

Tons of issues all over the place with outages;

They just went full on blizzard warning from Cleveland to Erie and the secondary snowbelt till tomorrow morning.

Youngstown airport has been reporting blizzard conditions for most of the morning.

Computer models last night were showing Buffalo getting 94 inches of snow between frontal passage thru 12/26.

Lake Erie has a storm warning for 14-18 foot waves with peak waves around 24 feet thru tomorrow morning.

Yeah folks, this is some dangerously cold weather. Just went out and shoveled... for about 10 minutes. Wind and cold had burned through all three layers and my thinsulate gloves. Stay inside. stay warm, and don't do anything silly thinking you can 'brave' the cold.

And the temps are supposed to be single digits for 48 hours in NE Ohio.
Have precautions in case you lose power

Below zero temps and 50mph winds made me realize my windows and doors weren't as well insulated as I thought.

The seiche is real.

Pretty cold around here as well. It was 7 this morning. Windy. It is a balmy 15 right now. Pretty much calling for the same tomorrow. Calling for low to mid 50's by next Wednesday.

It's probably been 25 years since was last reached single digit temps.

Thankfully we’ll warm up quickly. By 10pm we’ll be over freezing. The forecast for tomorrow is 51.

j/c

2 below right now, winds at 25-30 mph. "feel like' temp is about -27. Our garage is 30 degrees. Our furnace can't keep up. Rooms are, highest, is 67 and that's with an electric space heater going as well. I have an electric, oil filled radiator heating going in my daughters room. Her room windows face the wind. About 62 in her room right now.

Just need to hold out til Sunday late morning/early afternoon.

I have 2 faucets dripping water, intentionally, and a small electric heater (soon to be 2) blowing on the water line in the garage.

It's 70 degrees in the apartment I live in. Furnace is at 75. The building I live in is 100 years old and when they renovated the place (about 25 years ago, I'm guessing) they didn't bother to put any insulation in the walls. It's obviously more cost-efficient to do so that way, but around these parts it should always be done.

Yuck. All that sounds terrible.

I have tons of books in boxes all around the "wind front" side of my office wall. They don't look all that pretty, but they sure do insulate.

We paid to have our house walls insulated two summers back. They removed a couple rows of siding. Punched some holes. Filled the bays and put it all back together. Wasn’t real cheap but I'm so glad we did on days like today.

When we built our house, the county was coming out of the 2008 housing crisis and they had to give out some deals to get people to build new houses. We already had bought our land, so they knew we were ready to go.

We shopped a couple builders and got one to give out a couple freebies and 10-15k free upgrades if you built with them.

Instead of upgrading interior paint and other stuff we could do ourselves-we through the whole allowance into upgrading the exterior walls to 8", a higher insulation factor for all of the walls, more energy efficient windows, a woodburning fireplace, and put the rest of the money into a better, longer lasting roof-And then they let us come in one weekend and insulate the whole garage ourselves before they boarded up--and a couple other things like wiring the house for surround sound.

Best money we ever spent

Brutal cold and wind in western PA. Expecting a dumping of lake effect snow starting this evening. Stay safe everyone

Not all that uncommon for a fairly large drop, but 20 feet is pretty significant.

That’s a crazy movement of water

If it weren't so damn cold, I'd take a drive take a look...I'm only a couple miles from the southwest lakeshore. I'm getting old like the rest of you, a few years ago it would have been a no brainer.

I have my oven on now with the door down for additional heat. It definitely helps.

Um, I freaking hate winter.

My friend who lives in Calgary said it was minus freaking stupid the other day. Actual temp was -41C.

Darn global warming ........

Hope they stay safe. That temo range is very dangerous,

doing that without the room heat being on has been blamed for starting fires, I'm not sure if the oven works too hard, just don't burn your house down.
I don't know how it works I just heard it on the news, I did hear it on the news.

My furnace is on but when it gets this cold, it's not enough.

That’s my grandparents old trick haha love it

I just talk a lot. All my hot air heats the whole house

40 degrees this morning. I know that doesn't sound cold to you folks in sub-zeros, but considering it was 85 3 days ago, it's freaking cold.

Having lived in and visited many, many times over the years, that is VERY chilly.

Calgary looks like it's actually warmer than Columbus today and tomorrow. Calgary seventeen to thirty nine, low and high today,
It's currently I3 in Columbus, it's been between there and hovering around 0 to neg. 2 the past 3 days.

And they certainly can't mean thirtynine in celcius because that is near a hundred degrees summertime hot.

National death toll is at 49 with 34 in New York and 29 in the Buffalo area.

Sadly, they still have people at temp morgues that they have to determine if their death was storm related or not, they are still finding people in cars and they have not been able to check very many people in their homes that called 911 and first responders couldn't get there or that no one has heard from for a few days.

We’re having driving rain and high winds. Power is out all over the city. I got a text from PGE stating it’s out at my house. Hopefully they get it on before I get home from work. If not I’ll have to fire up the generator to run the fridge, entertainment center, and the woodstove fan.

Been without power since. Generator is gassed up and running the fridge. Fire is keeping the house warm. Hopefully by morning the power will be back on. If not I’ll get more gas for the generator and live in the relative dark, cooking on my camp stove until it does.

There’s still over 84,000 homes without juice around the city. I count myself lucky to be able to power a little bit of my basic needs. Not everyone can. Hopefully people are staying warm tonight.

Pretty much everyone can, they just don't prepare.

I just don't understand people dying in their cars when stuck during winter conditions . For under $50, if you are starting with nothing you can foster together a survival bundle to stick in the trunk of the car that will keep you alive for several days.

We slept in the livingroom on a futon mattress in the floor, close to the stove. I had to wake up every couple hours to feed it more wood.
Power came back on at 2:30 this morning. Thankfully.
I got up and went out back and killed the generator, plugged in the fridge, then went back to bed.
Got crap for rest last night but the house stayed warm. The food stayed cold.
It was a win.
There’s still about 39,000 people in town without power.

I am going to break down and get a generator and the switches for my panel this spring. We rarely lose power......the last time it went out for any length of time was during that huge brownout that affected the entire eastern US, but I was pretty worried during this recent storm. There were a few 15-30 second outages that had us a little concerned. We would have been totally screwed had the power went out for any length of time. We really can't just leave, we have 2 dogs and 2 cats. Right now, I have a fireplace (no woodburner) and a small generator that would power the fridge and little else.

You'de be surprised at how much a small generator can actually run if you choose wisely.

Part of our hurricane kit is my 5500watt genny, and I have a Ryobi 1800 quiet generator.

After Ian I only ever ran the Ryobi, it's small, quiet, and 1.5 gallons will run 8-10 hours. No problem running the fridge a few ceiling fans and most of the lights (All my lights are LED), and had a small 24" LED TV with an antenna to keep us entertained.

My 5 gallon can only had to be refilled 2x during the 8 days we were without power, running the genny 24/7.

I have been researching generators. I want at least 7,500 watts of power. There are two Generacs that are very highly rated. One is about $7,000 and the other about $2,650. Installation probably around another $2,500. Have any of you looked at them, own one, or know someone who has one.

I just have a small Honda generator. It can run the fridge, woodstove fan, and entertainment center without problem. A tank of gas lasts about 8 hours or so.
Heat, food, and entertainment the trifecta of getting through outages. If you have those three things it’s bearable.
Doing lighting and such for festivals means I have a ton of heavy duty extension cords. I can get power anywhere in the house easily. Getting into the house… well, I had to cut a hole in a screen in my laundry room for the extension cord from the genny to inside the house. Just used a towel to fill the gap in the window. I’ll fix the screen this summer.
My grill was out of gas unfortunately so I had to cook burgers on my camp stove. Thankfully I have a bunch of canisters of gas for that.

It’s good to have the basics of self sufficiency. I’m sure there were many in my hood that had a much rougher go of it than I did. Though I could hear a neighbor’s generator from my backyard. So at least one other house was doing alright.

Tip to those thinking about getting a portable generator.

Plan ahead, or keep a 5 gallon can of gas full all the time. I keep one full with a little stabil in it, and every 4-6 months I dump it into the Jeep and go refill it.

Can't tell you how many people I know that have generators but don't keep gas for it, and then after the hurricane when even gas stations had no power for pumping, they were all in a panic.

I keep 5 gallons on hand and a siphon kit I can get fuel from our vehicles if need be.

Just to let people know .... there is a way to reconfigure your furnace to run on a car battery in an emergency.

Just one of those things you run across on the internet.

I have a 3100 watt Champion inverter generator that I got to power the camper AC and fridge and charge the battery. I'm not going to shell out the big bucks for one that automatically kicks on, but I want enough power to run the furnace, fridge, lights and computers.

That is really all you need. I understand whole house generators, but having enough to power up a fridge and a few select items is all one needs. If you are in cold climate you need a heat source, warm climate, a small window unit to use to cool a room or two. Even a few box fans if nothing else.

In cold conditions you may not even need to power a refrigerator. Just set stuff outside.