Well those buds on my hydrangea I wrote about last week have thoroughly frozen off. Welcome to winter, it is as Cold as Ice out there. Watching the Weather Channel on Monday as they were reporting on the cold temperatures and snow all the way down to Mississippi and Louisiana, they mentioned warnings by electric supplier Ercot, that Tuesday morning electric demand was expected to surpass supply resulting in brown-outs. Down south most people have electric heat and brown-outs would cut their ability to heat their homes, which inturn would create problems with frozen and burst pipes. Remember back a few years ago when Texas and Arkansas had an ice storm come through cutting the power for about seven days. 

The loss of heating was only the start of the problems as when the power came back on and the homes warmed up, all the pipes that had frozen and cracked started flooding the homes creating even more of a disaster. With the push to electric vehicles, the demand on the power grid is greater than it has ever been and there are far more electric vehicles on the road in the south than up here in the north. In brown-out conditions you can’t charge an electric vehicle, so now not only no heat but no wheels to boot. Hopefully you have made provisions for the chance we lose power for any extended period of time. With moving this year we made sure we would be set for emergency heating as we left our old wood stove, in our Swan Lake house. We heat primarily with a wood pellet stove and we have a backup generator to power the stove if the electric goes out. 

We also do have a fireplace that is fully functional that we usually only use for ambience, but it can be used to heat the house just in case. We wanted to make sure we were covered because Eldred was hit hard a couple years ago with a storm that brought down many trees on electric lines, and the area was without power for up to a week. It is far better to be prepared and never need it, than to not be prepared when something happens. It is just like buying insurance, you have in case you need it, but hope that you won’t. With the bitter cold expected here this weekend, make sure all your outdoor critters have an adequate water source. 

We have heaters for chicken waterers which can also be used for pets or your feathered friends by the bird feeder. Also heated buckets or trough heaters for horses, sheep, cows or deer. The crazy winter weather is expected to continue next week with a warmup and rain before it gets cold once again. One last note, as I was watching the storm coverage Tuesday morning with Jim Cantore in Memphis, TN, with six inches of snow in a city that only has six plow trucks, I noticed that the Weather Channel crew have brand new Carhartt Yukon Extremes winter coats to handle the brutal cold.