How was that (eastish north america) winter storm for ya'll?

[LD_TAndK]

We had a few hours power outage with 90+ year olds while it was single digit temperatures. House was getting cold fast! Made me think about how resilient our house really is.

We had relatives not make it to Christmas due to major tree damage to their community.

[Metalcat]

A bunch of family up here in Canada lost power for a few days, but for the most part the major roads stayed clear, which was great.

I'm in isolation before surgery, so I was already stuck inside. We almost never lose power in my building. Most of my neighbourhood did for less than a day though.

I just sat up in my concrete sky box and watched it snow sideways.
DH went out for a run. He likes to run in storms.

[chemistk]

We're in the mid-Atlantic, and we were on the better side of the snow/rain dividing line. 50 miles to the West of us got a few inches of snow and then ice on top, while we only got freezing rain -> regular rain. The wind thankfully dried all the moisture off roads and sidewalks as the temps dropped, so little to no black ice.

As with everyone who was impacted by the storm, the cold was probably the worst part. Our heat pump (non-inverter) struggles once temps drop below ~20F for an extended period of time, so I'm sure our electric bill will be a bit painful. The worst part wasn't the first day of cold, it was the third - by that point the ground had good and truly frozen and all that thermal mass that normally keeps our unconditioned basement around 55F dropped the temps to about 48F down there. When the house loses thermal mass like that, it's hard to not feel cold constantly. It's definitely given me some things to think about this coming spring WRT insulation, chimney repair, and air sealing.

I've been wondering if others felt this way, but I kept feeling an interesting solidarity with most of the country. Pretty much everyone West of the Rockies was experiencing uncomfortably cold windchills, and although it's terribly unfortunate that the storm turned out to be as deadly as it was, knowing that most people were struggling to stay warm took the edge off the cold a bit.

[ATtiny85]

No travel, no work, no power outage, so no problem here in the midwest for us. The wind is so annoying. Those -30F windchills sent me to the treadmill for a few runs to be safe.

[Shinplaster]

We got off pretty lucky.   Our house is about half a mile from Lake Ontario, which means we either get tons of lake effect snow, or the lake keeps it warm enough for it to be rain.   We got rain for at least half the storm, and not freezing rain when it changed over to snow.   We got maybe 8cm - so just a few inches of snow.  North of us got a lot of snow though.  The flash freeze on the roads wasn't fun for anyone, but luckily we didn't need to go anywhere.   By Christmas day the roads were fine and it wasn't all that cold - maybe -10C?   Cold here is -25C or worse.   We were worried we'd lose power due to the winds, but got off lucky there too.   I feel really sorry for everyone who had their Christmas totally screwed up.

Shout out to the Pickering snow crews - they are very good at their jobs.  The minute we crossed the border into Toronto on Sunday the roads were icy and crap.

[Sibley]

Snow was minor, cold was major. No major issues for me, though I'm going to talk to the plumber and see if it makes sense to add valves so I can drain a couple pipes. I can't prevent them from freezing when it goes below zero.

Very glad I don't live in Buffalo NY.

[RetiredAt63]

We seem to have been on the edge.   A bit of rain, some snow. One advantage of living where there is always winter snow is that the road crews are well equipped to handle it.

The wind - strong with amazing gusts.  Driving to DD's on Christmas Eve the roads were fine, just some snow at intersections where the wind had blown it, but there were times I was really fighting the steering wheel to not be blown sideways.

[Metalcat]

We're in the mid-Atlantic, and we were on the better side of the snow/rain dividing line. 50 miles to the West of us got a few inches of snow and then ice on top, while we only got freezing rain -> regular rain. The wind thankfully dried all the moisture off roads and sidewalks as the temps dropped, so little to no black ice.

As with everyone who was impacted by the storm, the cold was probably the worst part. Our heat pump (non-inverter) struggles once temps drop below ~20F for an extended period of time, so I'm sure our electric bill will be a bit painful. The worst part wasn't the first day of cold, it was the third - by that point the ground had good and truly frozen and all that thermal mass that normally keeps our unconditioned basement around 55F dropped the temps to about 48F down there. When the house loses thermal mass like that, it's hard to not feel cold constantly. It's definitely given me some things to think about this coming spring WRT insulation, chimney repair, and air sealing.

I've been wondering if others felt this way, but I kept feeling an interesting solidarity with most of the country. Pretty much everyone West of the Rockies was experiencing uncomfortably cold windchills, and although it's terribly unfortunate that the storm turned out to be as deadly as it was, knowing that most people were struggling to stay warm took the edge off the cold a bit.

Hmm, well for us it wasn't cold, it can get extremely cold here, but the benefit of snow storms is that it's always relatively warm if it's snowing. It's just dangerous and the power can go out. But when you live somewhere with extreme weather in general, I guess you lose the "snow day" perspective on the experience that other people have.

[nereo]

This was one of the worst storms for us in the last half century (coastal northern NE). A lot of downed trees and damage locally - thankfully some aggressive tree removal in October likely saved our home. Lost power for about 18 hours, some of my colleagues spent 2+ days in the dark. Just over 2” of rain in 24 hours followed by temps in the single digits. With no electricity for our sump we had several inches of water in our basement (something we need to address).

[BicycleB]

Rural Illinois near Missouri and Kentucky; southern Midwest. Due to gearing up ahead of time, I now own good cold-weather boots, long underwear, better gloves than before - now a fan of Rural King, a retailer that carries exactly what you need.

Power held and pipes in my apartment didn't break, so it was fine personally and amongst the people I know. Snow was 3 inches tops and local communities have road salting / road clearing crews, so local towns fine generally. Today the snow is melting and I think I'll be fine for Friday's planned vacation drive to Texas.

Don't know what happened to the homeless dude I fed an hour before hearing the first weather report. He seemed pretty lost. I can only hope someone took him in as the storm approached. :(

[teen persuasion]

Really amazed we didn't lose power, with 79mph wind gusts - last winter we had 3 power outages (one was our tree, we'd told the the tree trimming crew to just take it down, but they didn't).  Lots of drifts to dig out, and the truck refused to turn over on Tues (after starting on Mon) - of course it was parked at the bottom of the long driveway, to make it easier to get it out w/o needing to shovel everything, but that meant it blocked the other vehicles!  More shoveling to widen a path around it.

The snowbelt south of us just had the LES band sit over them the whole time.  The city always takes longer to dig out and clear side roads, just because of density, but the whiteouts meant they had to pull plows from the streets for hours.  And all the people who ignored the travel bans and got stuck definitely added to the trouble - needed to be rescued, vehicles in the way.

Most of the region was back to working Monday/Tues, but Buffalo is still trying.  Rochester had nothing!

[Weisass]

Just outside of Philly here… our experience was almost all rain, transitioning to a couple hours of snow as the temps plummeted. It was cold… single digits (6 degrees F was the low) for a couple days, and power was out on half our street for at least 36 hours, but we were able to stay warm.

[MayDay]

In MN this is pretty typical winter weather. Luckily that held true- bad weather for a day but not unusually cold.

The interstate south of us was closed for 22 hours which usually happens about once a year or every other year.

It is a good reminder though, that maybe we should get the chimney serviced just in case. We never use it as it hasn't been checked out any time in recent history, so feels unsafe. Realistically though if it costs more than about 500$ we won't pay given we've never lost power in 5.5 years here and have gas heat.

[Just Joe]

This was the coldest period we've experienced since we moved into this house. Wasn't sure if we'd have problems with pipes, etc. No problems to report. Nothing froze.

We had 1" of snow. Roads were slick but easy to manage with decent tires and a light foot.

Upstairs heat pump struggled. We adjusted the thermostat down to 60F. We've discovered that when the temps are that cold, the temp delta between upstairs (HP) and downstairs (propane) keeps the heat pump off more at the expense of using more propane of course. HP is still the right heating device here as our weather is rarely that cold.

TVA had rolling blackouts which is new. ~30 minutes per sector. Some people seemed to experience several blackouts, we experienced one. We have a house generator anyhow so the only thing that changed for us is that DW couldn't work on the baking she wanted to do until the power came back on as the oven is not part of the generator circuits.

Makes me wonder about EVs and the recent population growth we've seen. Are we really ready for that here in great numbers? At least the grid is more reliable than the first year we lived here. We'd experience outages that lasted hours back then many times per year. Equipment failures, etc. Now the power hardly blinks off.

We did go see our extended family overnight after we were confident the house could be left alone. Adjusted thermostats to 50F upstairs and 60F downstairs. No problems. We needed our annual FoxNews dose. One relative brought up politics and surprisingly nobody else piled on so that was nice... 

Purchasing a heat pump water heater today or tomorrow as we move forward on switching from propane to electric. Still using up the propane left in the tank. Will switch main floor heat and generator to gas, everything else on electric.

[ChickenStash]

I was driving through IL/MO when the storm was going through there but it wasn't a big deal to me. It sounds like it didn't become a problem until it picked up some moisture over the lakes.

The interstates had some snow cover but nothing extreme. Lots of people off the road, though. I was stopped for ~2 hours waiting for wrecks to be cleared at various points. It was windy so the semis were having a lot of trouble. I saw quite a few off the road, turned over, trailers split in half, that sorta thing. Many of the wrecked trailers were still there on Monday when I was driving back. Most of the problems were on I44 south of St. Louis which is a dumpster fire of a road in the best of times.

[sonofsven]

I'm about as far west as you can get, but we were down to 25* before Christmas. That melted pretty quickly; in fact it was near 50* within a day.
That turned into an "atmospheric river" aka, lots of rain , and 70 mph wind.
Power was out here for a day and a half.
I can still cook on my gas stove, just need to light the burner, and since I have a wood stove for heat I was plenty warm. I also have the old school gas water heater with a pilot so plenty of warm water. Read a book by lantern light and listened to my battery radio.
It was nice.

[LaineyAZ]

I just read an account of a man who got stuck in the snow in upstate New York.  He said he went to about 10 houses asking to come inside, even offering them money to sleep on their floor, and all ten told him No.    I'm just astounded - are we so afraid of strangers that we'd rather let them die of exposure?

Eventually he found a local school where he broke in to take advantage of the heat and water, and also managed to help a few others nearby who had also been stuck in their cars.  He's a hero, but those households who denied him basic shelter need to really re-think what it means to be human.

[Just Joe]

TVA had rolling blackouts. That was the only thing that was out of the ordinary. Had a battery radio ready. Gas logs if we needed them. 0F is a different kind of cold though.

Last year we provided a bed to a friend whose power was out a week during an ice storm. I half expected them or us to lose power. All was well.

[sailinlight]

I'm in north Florida. I'm mildly annoyed that the temperature dipped below freezing and many of my outdoor plants died.

[BicycleB]

I'm in north Florida. I'm mildly annoyed that the temperature dipped below freezing and many of my outdoor plants died.

:(

[jrhampt]

Just rain and wind here, plus some roads flooded with the storm surge in high tide (at monthly peak due to moon phases, so not uncommon).  I missed it because I was in bed with covid; otherwise I might have gone for a run myself.  I also like running in storms.