The BIG FREEZE of 2021

2/16/2021

Well, that’s not good, turned on the water pump and nothing, of course outside thermometer said it was 2 degrees. We put water in the water tank and put up the water hose before the deep freeze arrived, but no water pump could be bad.

I won’t know anything until Mary gets up, it’s 4:00 and I thought I would let her sleep being the super sweet, extra nice (cough cough) guy I am. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about the water if something is busted and not just frozen.

Inside it is a cool 64 but not cold even with the 2 degrees or lower outside. The problem is the waterlines are ran along the outside walls, and I may not be able to determine what’s just frozen and what’s busted until everything thaws out and we won’t see above freezing temperatures until Friday. The high today is expected 26 with some sunshine.

According to the weather guy, it was in 1930 the last time it was this cold here.

The roads are still a mess and they are asking people not to go out unless necessary. We’re about 2-3 miles from a 4 lane highway but I don’t know if it’s been plowed or not. I do plan to drive out to the main road just to see what its like.

The outside faucet should not be frozen, it’s one of those frost proof faucets and we have a few 1 gallon jugs so drinking and more importantly coffee water shouldn’t be a problem.

Watching the news this morning, we have another winter storm headed our way for tonight and tomorrow, sounds like some places may get as much as 3/4 inch of ICE. Right now it sounds like we will get little to no ice, we should be mostly snow, but we’re near the ice snow line so we’ll just need to wait and see. Wide spread power outages are a big concern, that’s not counting the roaming power outages in some parts of the state. Another station finally said we may get 3-8 inches of new snow from this new system. Again that all depends on where the snow/ice line ends up.

We do have the generator, if it starts, if we loose power. I did start it the other day when it was around freezing, did start after running rough for a few seconds.

Least I forget the family in the tent left about an hour before dark last night, that leave us the only ones in the park and maybe some of the camp host up near the entrance I didn’t get out yesterday so I don’t know who is around. There are 3 other campers that I know of but no cars have been around them since it turned cold.

8:00 pm nothing in the water pump is frozen, and it’s getting power so I’m thinking the pump itself is bad. Sadly I never got around to getting a backup water pump. I’m going to call around to see if anyone has a pump in stock, just not sure when to get one.

2/17/2021

8:00 am currently nothing but snow, we may get 6-8 more inches today, south of here they are getting snow, sleet and freezing rain. Power outages, not the roaming kind, are a real concern.

2/21/2021

THINGS are kinda a blurrrrrrr. We didn’t do much durning the deep freeze, stayed inside, thankfully we didn’t loose power.

This area is ill equipped for this much snow or this cold, I know it’s been all over the news so I won’t say much here except to say that the area was shut down for several days, as of yesterday the I-20 that goes through Shreveport LA was still shut down or ice covered and dangerous. At one point durning all of this a semi had jack knifed on an expressway bridge and it was so slick the wreckers couldn’t get to the semi let alone tow it away. On a different day I herd them mention sand trucks but spreading a little sand on several inches of hard packed ice did little to help.

The day after the deep freeze we took a shower at the park’s shower house. We were also getting water from there, the next day that water was turned off. From talking to someone, who works for the COE, driving through he said that 10 of the 14 wells this rural water company has are off line. The showers we took may have been just from water pressure in the lines because the next day the shower house had no water.

By experimenting with some C & D batteries I was able to confirm the our water pump is working and I don’t believe any lines busted. I can get the pump working, todays project, it’s a ground issue, but unfortunately in my experimenting I cut a little to much off the wires and they are now to short. Hopefully an auto parts store will be open today.

Texarkana TX has 2 Walgreens both were closed most of the week.

With so much snow and not much else to do Mary whipped up a big batch of snow ice-cream.

Everyone kept sayin yellow snow is the best, so I tried some, it was the best!!!

2/22/2021

Most of the snow has melted and watching the news this morning I think the last of the roads are opening in Shreveport, where we get the TV news.

I did a work around and got the water pump going yesterday, the shower felt good. I think the water in the park is back on, we’re going to stay here until Friday, so I” be connecting back to city water.

The picture with the pan it is where I just set out the pan to catch snow for the snow ice-cream.