Matter of Facts: Snowing on the Gulf Coast?!?

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravely, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts Podcast. Andrew got sprung from federal

[00:00:34] prison courtesy of an executive order, so he's with us tonight. Thanks, Trump. Yep. Nick has also joined us. This is the Matter of Facts Podcast. We have just a little tiny bit of admin work and we're going to get into talking about the wild, insane world of Mother Nature and her bipolar behind lately. So thank you to the patrons for keeping the show funded and going. If you're not a patron, those links are in the show description. If you like mayhem

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[00:01:56] Anybody, did anybody have 10 inches of snow on the Gulf Coast on their bingo card for this year? Anybody at all? Because even when the meteorologists were saying it, I was freaking like a little beside myself about the thought that we would have record setting snowfall in South Louisiana. Well, when your previous record's four inches, it really don't take much. Hey, thank you, Nick. But let's stop and think about this for a moment.

[00:02:22] In 30 years of living here on the Gulf Coast, of living here in Louisiana, I've lived on the Gulf Coast my whole life. It has snowed two other times in Louisiana, both of which amounted to about four inches. So this is only the third time in 30 years and it more than doubled the amount of snow we had before. It was a little bit shocking. Oh, absolutely.

[00:02:47] Riggle Fraggle said he wants his carbon credits back. I mean, sounds fair to me because it doesn't seem like it's making the weather that much nicer. Although if the carbon credits are supposed to make the weather cooler, then you got your money's worth. Well, I got your money's worth at least. So there's that. And yeah, the Gulf Coast has more snow than Minnesota. Someone's going to have to explain this to me because all of y'all were having a good old laugh at my expense when I was showing y'all pictures

[00:03:14] in the patron chat of the snow talking about, oh, it's snowing more there than it is here. Well, you know what? Mother Nature got drunk and wandered into my backyard. So I'm going to send her over to y'all's house next time. Fair. All right. Well, before we get to talking about all the fun and adventure and you two can critique my snowpocalypse, you know, preparations, because what the hell do I know about snow? This was the scene the first day of the snowfall. So we wound up with my wife

[00:03:43] measured. I think I think our tally came out to like nine inches. So that picture on the right was maybe an hour after the snow, the snowfall started. And the picture on the left is that afternoon. And it was shocking. This is my Tacoma. It has never seen snow before in its life. It was very confused. I had personally never realized, never, I guess, stopped to think about the fact that

[00:04:11] snow can pile up on the windshield so much that like a broom can't sweep it all off. Don't ask me why I thought that was going to work, but I was kind of at options. Oh, don't use a broom on your windshield, man. That'll scrape the shit out of your windshield. Oh, dude, that truck spent so much time getting rocks flung into it and it wasn't hurting much. Oh, that's good. Yeah. This was my down. Go ahead. This was my daughter's snowman on the left side of the screen the day she

[00:04:38] made it. And this was it on the right after it got drunk, fell over and died. Was that like two hours? So in between. No, no. So the picture on the left was Tuesday and the picture on the right was like two hours ago. Yesterday, it was only above freezing for a couple of hours. So like everything that was in the sun thawed and started melting, but everything that was in the shade stayed, stayed frozen, stayed snowy. So when I woke up this morning, like you could very clearly see in

[00:05:07] our yard, the parts of the yard that are shaded most of the day, those still had snow piled up four inches thick and the parts around direct sunlight. It looked like springtime. I mean, the grass was grass was shown again. And this is like, this was the only before and after picture I really took. And then the picture on the left is not the peak of the snowfall, but that picture on the left is from early Tuesday morning. And the picture on the right is from this morning. So in 48 hours time,

[00:05:35] we went from nothing to nine inches snow back to almost nothing. And you can see in that right hand picture, like the snow still piled up four or five inches deep on the back pour on the back deck where the, where the shade keep kept it. But then everything out in the yard, it all melted away pretty quickly. Yeah. You know, with, with how warm it was down by you guys, and this is one of the reasons

[00:06:02] why the North didn't get so much snow, we were too cold for, to get really heavy snowfall, being that a lot of us were in the negatives. A quarter inch of rain equates to about one inch of snowfall. You guys had about 10 inches or about 10 inches of snow. So yeah, it's like two and a half inches of rainfall. So, you know, you're realistically, you're looking at trying to push broom two and a half inches of water

[00:06:28] off of your windshield. That's a considerable amount of weight. Gillian says, hi, Andrew. Yeah. But I mean, like I said, really what it was, was yesterday, like I realized there was a possibility I might have to, I might have to get out on the road today. So yesterday I was trying to like

[00:06:52] push as much of the big chunks of snow off. Cause I realized that the snow was almost like insulating itself. And if I could get the majority of it knocked off, then I figured whatever was left would melt away this morning, which seems to have worked because Gillian's car last time I checked still has like two inches snow, like from the, from the hood all the way to the back of the hatch. And my truck is completely clear now. Is, was school still shut down today then?

[00:07:19] Yes. And we just got notification about 45 minutes ago. St. Tammany parish. And for those who haven't heard of the spiel, parishes are like counties anywhere you don't live that, you know, is Louisiana, but the parish closed parish schools for tomorrow. My wife's private school is kind of like polling the audience as far as the teachers trying to figure out, can we, can we safely, you know,

[00:07:46] like is enough of our student body and our teacher, our, our, our faculty okay to come to school tomorrow that it makes sense to come to school tomorrow. And I think Gillian may said that they finally, I know that she got the text. I don't remember the outcome of the text because there's been a lot going on here, but either they're going to school tomorrow or they're off tomorrow. And I don't know, we'll wait and find out, but they're, um, the school was supposed to participate

[00:08:11] in a state competition for the robotics program in new Orleans to, uh, Saturday. And that has been canceled because at least as of, well, at least at no bear in mind for, for the sake of like geography, bear in mind where I live, I live on the North shore of a Lake and new Orleans and all of its associated, like, you know, areas are South of the Lake. So you have to drive over a 20 mile

[00:08:38] or a 10 mile long bridge to get from here to there. And I don't know if y'all are aware of this, but bridges and sub-zero temperatures that are going over bodies of water is kind of a little bit of an issue. So like, as of this morning, those bridges are all still closed. Oh, really? No, no one's being allowed on them. You guys are still going to be below freezing tomorrow and Saturday then? Uh, at night. So where, so the early morning it's gonna, yeah.

[00:09:06] Yeah. But like I said, I mean, every, it's fairly common knowledge and like everywhere you drive down here, you see a warning sign at every bridge, every elevator roadway saying warning, you know, bridge will ice before the ground because it's above the ground. You don't have the heat sink of the ground. It will, I mean, bridges will ice before the ground does. So the worry is that even though the

[00:09:30] roads are starting to free back up, those bridges are still a death trap and they very well may be a death trap for several days because it might, it's, it's only above freezing right now for about six to eight hours of the day. And then it goes back down below freezing. So whatever doesn't fall in that amount of time, ain't going to fall until the next day. And bear in mind, like this whole situation overnight, at least on the bridges. Yeah. And bear in mind, this entire situation only exists because it's Southeast Louisiana.

[00:09:59] We don't have salt trucks. We don't salt the roads. Our entire, our entire infrastructure is built absorbing massive amounts of liquid rainfall. It's drainage that our, our infrastructure is built to cope with because of the pervayance of flooding and thunderstorms and hurricanes. This area has never been built to deal with 10 inches of snow. So we're in a situation where it's like the P the powers that be

[00:10:29] are proceeding in a very careful manner because we are dealing with a situation that is a little outside of the norm. And everyone is really figuring the situation out pretty much at full speed. Like even, even the off chance that my wife and I might've had to leave to go deal with a, an extended family member today. Like even then we'd already talked about, we're taking the truck

[00:10:55] because I've actually got, you know, four season tires on my truck and she, she only has three seasons on her Jeep. We had talked about packing like warm blankets and heavy coats. And like, we were, we were prepared for the fact that we might get stuck someplace for a little bit. We might get stuck in the vehicle if we get stuck in traffic. Like, you know, the, a lot of this harkens back to a situation I found myself in back in 2008, which was not the last time it snowed,

[00:11:21] but the time before that. And it snowed about three, four inches, um, west of here in Hammond, Louisiana here. And in Slidell where we lived at the time, it actually didn't snow. It just sleeted. But in that situation, I got stuck on the interstate cause I was driving to Hammond to take finals at college and two 18 wheelers hit black ice and just locked down the entire interstate. So I was stuck

[00:11:46] in traffic for three and a half hours, just nowhere to go. Just sitting there trying to keep warm in the truck. So, yeah. So, so realistically, if you guys get any amount of snowfall at all, you're shut down for at least a day or two. And in this case so far, what this is day, uh, Friday be day four Friday be day four. And it's not even just snow. I mean, like if there's, if the temperatures down

[00:12:12] here get below freezing and there is any amount of precipitation, even if it's not snowfall, just it rains. If it rains and then it gets down below freezing, they lock the state, they lock this area down because you can't drive, you can't drive five miles in any direction without going over a bridge. Right. The bridges are all death traps if you get black ice on them. So, you know, like that, that is the way this part of the state is traditionally dealt with these kinds of situations.

[00:12:37] It is send everybody home, shut down everything that's non-emergency, stay your butts at home and wait for this to blow over. And, you know, like we were seeing from the pictures, like it it's today's Thursday when we were recording this Thursday at five 13 PM central for the sake of clarity, clarity. It started snowing about six 37 AM central Tuesday morning. Here we are to, you know, 20 or 48 hours

[00:13:03] plus a handful later. And it's mostly melted away at this point. Like if we wanted to go into town, go get gas, go to a grocery store, we could, but you're still not going to go over an elevator roadway or a bridge for another day or two, which means you're not going from here to New Orleans. You're not going from here to Hammond in any, at any great rate of speed. You're not going to slide L whatever town you're in, you're going to stay in for a few for, I would say, I would probably say

[00:13:30] till tomorrow, tomorrow things will probably start to free up, but that is just the way we've always dealt with things. Like there is no, there is no snow mitigation procedure because if you had plow trucks, they would rot sitting in the parking lot because we know we, we almost never used them. Yeah. Why would we? Yeah. It wouldn't be a cost effective use of state funds to even, to even begin to play around with that. Not really in the long, in, in the short or longterm,

[00:14:00] but you know, that's, that's interesting because around here, you know, around Andrew, I'm sure is about the same. If we were going to get 10 inches of snow and it was going to come in a few hours that would shut down, that would shut down schools for the day. You know, if it was going to be more than that, it might, it might shut down. Heck, I doubt it even shut down schools for more than a day, unless it was like 18 to 20 inches of snow. But you know, it, um,

[00:14:31] what, uh, what around here, what really will shut down schools? I mean, you know, 10 inches of snow will, uh, definitely put a hurting on, uh, on school system. But what stops a lot, a lot of times what stops is the back roads, uh, because the main roads, the cities and stuff, there's, there's such more higher priority, uh, the highways, the freeways, all that, all those are higher priorities.

[00:14:59] So, I mean, with this last storm we had, I mean, like the back roads going back to my girlfriend's house, I mean, they, they're ice. I mean, they're, and, but on top of that, it's been too cold that, uh, they won't really put much salt down or if any, because, uh, it doesn't work. Uh, so it's been so cold out. Um, what I like, I hate when they plow down to ice. That's what sucks is, uh,

[00:15:25] I would rather them leave a layer of snow, uh, that you get way better traction on, I mean, on just snow than just pure ice. Uh, and so, but, uh, but yeah, so that's what really stops and that's what stops. I mean, the schools up here have been closed the last couple of days, uh, in areas just because of, uh, all the back roads and then it's been too cold. Uh, that's the thing is when it gets down and I think, neg, I think negative 23, I think with windchill,

[00:15:53] uh, was up in the upper peninsula. Um, I think, uh, we had a negative, I think I saw negative 18 on my, on my phone with windchill. So it was like negative, you know, eight or negative three or whatever. And then with windchill was negative 10 or 12 or something, or I know we hit, I know we hit, um, at least 15, I can't remember exactly what, uh, what it got down to the fullest, but, um, but yeah, it was cold. I mean, I went and, uh, I was snow blowing my driveway the other day

[00:16:23] and I mean, it, it was cold even with gloves on and stuff. It, uh, it, it was, uh, it was pretty chilly. So, uh, and yeah, it's so, uh, no, I mean, it's, that's the thing is here. I mean, obviously the bridges, we have signs all over the bridges that say, you know, bridges will freeze or the roads and, uh, they, you know, and all that stuff. And that's really the common knowledge is because of the wind, uh, the wind that, uh, just the, how they, that wind effect that they can

[00:16:50] really create, uh, the freezing temperatures and then the ice on top of the bridges. Uh, the issue is, I mean, especially down there, I mean, nobody knows how to drive, uh, on if, even if you got a half inch of snow, nobody knows how to drive on that stuff. Um, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting. It's, uh, I mean, I'm glad that, uh, you got to see your snowfall. Uh, so I'm happy you got that.

[00:17:18] So before I ask the question I had, let me answer raggle fraggle. I did not get any reloading done because I've been working remotely for the last three days. Now I am off tomorrow. Um, I might crawl into the, uh, I might crawl into the garage, which is unheated by the way, and try to get a little bit done. But, um, yeah, my, my garage is the same temperatures as outside. So it's not exactly going to be super pleasant. Although I do have a Mr.

[00:17:47] Buddy heater sitting over here in the equipment rack. So that might have that. Well, I've tested before and it's a gift from God in the cold, but I've never, I'd never intended to use it in the garage because normally when it gets this cold, I turn the fireplace on and I sit inside and drink my toddy and not, not freeze my freaking ass cheeks off. But for y'all, I do have some stuff that needs to get reloaded. So I might go full with that. But anyway, I did have a question

[00:18:15] though, and you both said it. What is the significance of the speed of the snowfall? Because like you both said, if you get like 10 inches really fast versus 10 inches over a period of time. And for, for the cool you on down here, who says snow is the devil and any amount of it is bad. And if it lands on the ground, that's it. We're all done. We're all done. We're all going to stay home. Explain to me why it's not as bad if the snow drops over a period of like 12 hours versus 12 minutes.

[00:18:44] Well, it's, uh, I mean, and Nick chime in too, but to my knowledge, it's all about how to keep up with it. Uh, exactly. Yep. So like here in Michigan and Grand Rapids, I know, I remember one year they shut down one 31 is the main highway that travels North and South between, and it basically travels North and South and goes right between like, it goes through Grand Rapids. They shut that, they shut the entire highway down, uh, because it was snowing so hard and so fast.

[00:19:14] And for so, and like, I don't want to say so long, but it snowed so much in such a short period of time that the snow, the plows, they couldn't keep up with it. So when you're, when you have a plow, when you have plows that are going over the road and they say, they say there's a hundred yard stretch at their, their, that the one plow is responsible for, they plow over it. And then, you know, and there's three inches of snow and then they turn around by the time I get back to the hundred yards and they start to come back to salt or do anything else. There's four inches of

[00:19:39] snow. Like it's, it serves no purpose. Your return on investment is not there. So they, and so that's simple. So like, that's just simple. They can't keep up with this. So when we say, oh, we're getting five inches of snow in two hours, like that's a crap ton of snow really. Um, that's, that's a dump, um, where they, where it's just hard for the crews to keep up with it. And so a lot of the time and visibility becomes a problem for them, especially when the, um, especially with the,

[00:20:07] uh, the wind, uh, the whiteout conditions. I mean, uh, I was on the road the other day and, uh, we were behind a propane truck and I mean the propane truck, it was different colors, but the tank itself was white. Uh, and then the wind kicked up and it was, I don't know, 25, 50 yards away. And you could not see the truck at all because the wind was, it was blowing so bad. Uh, and so, and that's a big object. So, uh, you know, and so that's the thing is visibility when it

[00:20:36] comes down to it, it's the safety for the drivers and the plow, the plow crews. And then it's also just, um, them being able to safely and basically take care of the roads on a timely manner. And at that point, when it gets to that point, they just say, screw it. They say, don't, unless you have to leave the house, don't, uh, other than that, just stay home, wait for the storm to pass. And then once it stops snowing, then the snow crews, or if it starts slowing down,

[00:21:04] then the snow crews will get back out and start working on some stuff. But that's another, another thing that can be a problem. Uh, just one second, Phil. And another thing that can be a problem is the weight of the snow that the plow truck is trying to push. If the snow is coming down too, too fast for the plow trucks to keep up with, to keep it under the level that they can safely push at speed, then they, they have to stop. They have to stop because the trucks just will

[00:21:33] not move the snow off the road. It'll just roll up in front of the plows. If you ever look at videos of the plow trucks, Phil, you'll notice they got that blade at an angle basically like this. So it's kicking the snow off to the side of the road. They have to move at a certain speed for the given angle of the plow to push it off to the side. And if they cannot safely maintain that speed, they cannot efficiently clear the road because it'll just roll the snow up in front of them. And that's before you get into drifting. So if we're talking about like an inch of snowfall per hour, y'all would just

[00:22:02] like party on drive through it, screw it. Okay. Two, two inches per hour. It can, depending on the wind can get dicey more. Uh, when we've had three to four inches an hour, they just shut it down. They just flat shut it down. Cause they're not going to keep up. Yeah. Well, like I said, I, I know that there was a period where it came, it was coming down pretty hot and heavy. It slacked off and then it picked back up. But I mean, you know, we got, it started at seven o'clock in the morning

[00:22:32] and it finally cut off about three, 4 PM in the afternoon. We ended up with nine inches at my house. One of my coworkers on the South shore ended up with like 12 inches. So it's not a pretty good bucket down here. Um, you were probably a little over an inch an hour of snowfall, maybe inch and a half an hour. Now, I mean, and as far as preparation, so knowing that we had no intention

[00:22:59] of leaving the house in anything short of the, the worst God given emergency you can imagine. My biggest concern was honestly power outage because I have gas service to the house. So I had reasonable expectation that like the gas fireplace would still work. We'd be able to turn on the burners on the stove and, you know, boil water cook if we had to. But my biggest worry really was

[00:23:26] if we lost electricity for an extended period of time, given that if the temperature is going to drop down into the teens in the evening, I was concerned that if we lost power for too long with the central heat, we were going to wind up with burst pipes in the house. So I was talking, I was actually talking to y'all during this situation. Like I've only got a 20 amp output on my generator,

[00:23:49] 20 amps at 220 volts. And I suspect that would be enough to fire up the scent to fire up the furnace for the house. All it's got to do is push is, you know, turn the squirrel cage and flip it, you know, turn on igniter and flip a couple of gas valves. And it's a natural gas heater, you know, furnace. I was pretty sure we, I was going to be able to pull that off. We were just gonna have to do some monkeying around in the breaker box to figure out what all had to be left on to make that happen

[00:24:15] and turn everything else off. But what I talked to my wife about in preparation was I'm like, look, we've got 20 gallons of fuel. We've got gen cord on standby. I did not pull the generator out of this shed ahead of time. I left in the shed for protection. I would have had to get this shot, would have had to get a shovel, like a transfer shovel and snow shovel snow from the front of the shed just to open it. Yeah. But we were in a position where like, we could have done that and

[00:24:43] we could have just flipped back and forth between run the central air for an hour and then turn that off and then run the fridge in the freezer and, you know, bounce back and forth if we had to, we had a, why would you run the fridge and freezer if it's 17 degrees outside? Just take the freezer and put it in the garage. I mean, that was frozen food and put it in the garage. I mean, if you're, I mean, even if your garage is 40 degrees, all right, the time it's going to take for the stuff in your freezer to thaw at 40 degrees is going to be much longer than

[00:25:13] the time it's going to take for your stuff to thaw in your hopefully 70 degree house, 68 degree house, whatever you keep it at. This is a good point. Again, we were kind of in our charred territory. Like, and you know, this is something that Gillian and I kind of talked about ahead, you know, right before the storm hit, I was, she was like, what do we do? And I was like, well, the problem here is like, we have two window units, but they're only air conditioning units.

[00:25:38] They do not have heat built into them. Now we did have, we do have a fairly decent size electric space heater that I keep up in the attic. We had to break, we had to buy that when our furnace died several years ago in the dead of winter. But, um, it's just one of those situations where it's like, you know, a lot of, a lot of our home preparedness plans are understandably built around

[00:26:01] hurricane season and August. They're built around keeping cool and keeping food from spoiling. They're not built around keeping the house warm because it's 17 degrees outside. They're not built around 10 inches snow. It's one of those situations where it's like, I had this and this and this that I could have like repurposed and put into position to help out with the situation because flexibility is a good thing, but we didn't custom tailor any of this preparedness plan ahead of time for snow.

[00:26:30] Cause why in the hell would we? So this has been a very, it's been a, you know, now fortunately, the name full disclosure, we never lost power, which shocks the hell out of me because like, normally if you spit on the sidewalk and blow up into the trees with your mouth purse, just right, you'll knock power out, but we never lost power. We didn't never even flickered. And that was our, that was our biggest worry was power outage because power outage means we now have to go to an emergency power source to keep the house from freezing and having burst pipes.

[00:26:59] And the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, for anybody that's familiar with ice storms, and they're very, very common in North Louisiana, Southern Arkansas, where my wife grew up, ice storms are not a thing we deal with this far south very often, but I was very concerned about this much snowfall. It get just a little bit above freezing and then freeze again. And now all that snow turns to ice and it's all sitting on those trees and all those trees start falling.

[00:27:30] I mean, fortunately in your area, you're hit by hurricanes enough that a lot of the weaker trees and weaker limbs are already off. Now up hurricane, I did clear out quite a bit, right up here by me. We don't get hurricanes. We get occasional wind storms, but we don't get the levels of wind that you guys get. So we can get a buildup of damaged dead and dying limbs on trees. And then the ice

[00:27:56] storm is going to take down a much larger percentage of branches than it would say down by you guys where the trees are, are hardened to that higher wind load. So. Yeah. Riggle Fragle just brought up something that actually wasn't one of our worries, but I have heard this from more than one person. He said that his parents are in a rural part of the state. Their water supply is shot right now. So. Not surprising. I'm not shocked at all. Now what Gillian I did notice because we were running our

[00:28:23] faucets literally from Tuesday morning until this morning, like we finally cut them off. We'll probably fire them up again here in a couple hours. Like it's going to be a little below freezing, but it's not going to get, it's not going to get way down into the lower twenties or the teens tonight. It's going to get into the upper twenties. I think we're probably fine. We're out of the woods. But, um, we noticed after all those hours, like 36, 40 hours straight of running the faucets,

[00:28:53] like our water pressure was getting a little bit on the low side. And I don't think it was just us. I think everybody in this area was running their faucets continuously trying to keep from bursting pipes. Cause that's just common thing down here. I mean, these houses are not built or insulated for that level of cold for that long. Well, your plan would be completely different because of your climate. Yeah. Well, I know when you and I were talking about it, you were kind of surprised to hear that,

[00:29:18] like our, um, our, our, uh, our junction of the city water supply is subterranean. It's underground. Like you have to pick up an access panel and go into a, about a nine inch deep hole in the ground to get to the water shut off. Now the good thing about that is... Well, I was shocked it was as shallow as nine inches. Yeah. Well, but it can't be too damn deep because if you go down, if you go down 18 inches, you're into the water table around here.

[00:29:45] The Buffalo box for the house that I used to own in town had a six inch, uh, there, no, that like a little four inch cap. And then it's got a pipe that drops down about six feet. And then to turn on and off the water, you put a key in the Buffalo box head and it turns a shaft six inches below you to open and shut that valve or six feet below you'd open and shut that valve. Yeah. And so that's considered the minimum safe distance for the water.

[00:30:14] If you put anything six feet underground, it's going to be in the water table. Cause I mean, I, I actually, I was considering putting a shallow water well in here just for like a backup water source. And I figured out that you only have to dig down anywhere from 18 to 40 inches and you're in the water table in my backyard. It's that freaking high. This is also why you can't like drain a swimming pool around here and leave it because if you do, it'll turn into a boat. I've seen that

[00:30:43] happen. Yeah. I used to be around here too. Well, but I used to work as a pool guy when I was going through college and like post hurricane Katrina, a whole bunch of homeowners got the bright idea. They were going to drain their pool so that the water wouldn't turn nasty and stay in the pools. And then lo and behold, all their, all their pools floated like a foot and a half up above the ground. Hydraulic pressure is a bitch. Yeah. Buoyancy. You cannot beat the laws of physics. You can cheat

[00:31:12] them. You can ignore them, but you can't beat them. Not for long, mind you. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, there, there are a lot of issues with water service around here, whether it's well or whether it's city. I mean, even we, we, we had a, one of our faucets that is just loud as hell, the way the water is kind of splashing into the sink. So we took him through a, a wash rag into the bottom of the sink, just kind of cushion it. Yeah. Well, my daughter noticed that the next day that wash

[00:31:38] rag had a brown spot on it. I'm not sure if it's iron or if it's rust, but it, it was picking up some particulates from the water. And I've heard more particulates are in your city water supply. Well, and I've heard that from more than one person that like there have been issues with the water. Um, Gillian and I were actually on the watch out for a boil water order, which never came, not that it mattered. And this is what I was going to say to Radical Frackles comment. Like we

[00:32:06] keep bottles of water on standby. So as soon as we started getting, as soon as the water pressure dropped to preempt a potential boil water order, we just went and grabbed some water bottles out of the rack and put one by each sink. And you know, if you need to, if you need to put it in your mouth, take it out of there. If you're just washing yourself, use the water in the sink, it's whatever. But right. You know, like sudden loss of water pressure to us because we've put a, we put a plan

[00:32:32] into play is not an immediate problem. And quite frankly, in the snow, it's water, water everywhere, not a drop to drink. Like, you know, bring it, it's cold, bring it inside. Yeah, you, you can, you can drink water from snow. I would still recommend you run it through a filter after you've thought it boil it. Yes, but run it through a filter if you can. There's a lot of particulate

[00:32:57] in the air, especially around a major metro area by you guys. Uh, break dust is a big one. You don't really want to drink tons of that. How much I mean in there? I don't know, but I still wouldn't like to drink break dust. So it'd just make your water a little crunchy. Uh, it also contains heavy metals. I'm being very, very sarcastic. Good for the audio listeners. If you cannot see my, my face, that was the sarcastic Phil

[00:33:24] that was speaking to y'all. So another thing that you can run into like, uh, where Andrew is at and where I'm at, where temperatures get very low, or we have these odd winters, like we've been having the last few years where the temperature rises and falls a lot. We get a lot of what's called ground heave and frost heave. What happens is, is as the ground cools and or cools and freezes and then warms up and thaws, the water mains shift and crack and break.

[00:33:55] Cause even, Oh, that sounds horrifying. Oh yeah. Yeah. There's been multiple boil water ordinances in the city, just up the street for me because of frost heave and thawing breaking water mains in the ground. And then the crews have got to come out. They put out a boil order. They dig down, they put a patch on the pipe, they fill the hole back in probably screw up some of the road until

[00:34:16] spring. And, uh, then, you know, after a few days, once they can test it is better. But when you get super cold temperature, I know Andrew said he got down to like minus 15, we had minus 30 in town by me. And, uh, I think the, without the, without the wind chill, it was negative 12. So, you know,

[00:34:43] at that temperature, you really don't get snow because the air is too dry. It can't hold much moisture, but what you can have is what snow that is on the ground or what snow that did fall the day or two before is that very light powdery snow that blows around everywhere. So even if the roads are clear in one spot, they may not be clear in another because where I live, it's a lot of large open corn and bean fields and there's nothing to stop the snow blowing across the road. So while you may not have

[00:35:12] had snow in say three, four or five days, you could come around a corner on the highway and there's a drift of snow six or eight inches deep in the middle of the road. Now the plow trucks can only come by so often and they knock those things back as much as they can. But Phil, I don't, I have you ever driven into a snow drift? I know you're asking a serious question. I'm, I'm, I'm restraining myself

[00:35:40] from the most sarcastic. Have you ever driven into like a, so in basic training, when you're driving the trucks, have you ever driven into a pile of sand? Oh yeah. Or deep sand. You know how your vehicle one way or the other? Oh yes. All right. Yank the stairwell right out of your hand. Yeah. Snow drifts will do the exact same thing as a deep pit of sand. I wonder how it feels compared to like hydroplaning. Cause you know, that is now that is a thing that does happen down here. It feels almost

[00:36:07] opposite. Really? Cause okay. So with hydroplaning, you know how you're steering does nothing all of a sudden? Yes. However, if you happen to be driving and you drive over like an isolated pocket, almost like a pothole, but it's filled with water that what that tire will very suddenly like pull the vehicle in that direction as one side of your, as one tire suddenly has 10 times the rolling resistance

[00:36:35] as the other side. Cause it's trying to push its way through this water. Yeah. Kind of similar to that. Yeah. Okay. So essentially, essentially what it's going to do is whatever side of the snow drift is higher, it's going to pull your car in that direction. So if you've got high, right, those tires on the right are going to hit that and it's going to not pull your vehicle at an angle. It is going to pull your vehicle like this. None, none of this sounds, none of this sounds fun. It's going to just,

[00:37:03] your, your car is going to still be pointed straight, but it will suddenly start just crawling to the other side of the road. Yeah. To one side of the road or the other. No, no, it happens. You get used to it, but no, you do. You get used to it. You get used to see, you see them coming and you slow down, you move into the other lane or you don't see them coming. You hit it and you ride it out and see what happens. Did y'all ever have aspirations of getting me to move closer to y'all? Cause you're not making a great case for yourselves right now.

[00:37:33] All I'm hearing. It only happens on the entire stretch of road from my house to work. All y'all are doing is just further affirming the fact that I need to move further south. Amen. The only further south you get is Mexico. I could be a warlord, Mexico. That could happen. Take out a couple of the car, take out a couple of the local cartels, set myself up as a warlord, intimidate a couple of judges and bribe the federales. I mean, I can make that work.

[00:38:02] I mean, they definitely do take bribes, but the, um, the trouble you get with that snow drifting is like Andrew was talking about before is that the plot trucks just can't keep up with it. And, and occasionally, even if you get say a foot of snow, okay, you've got a foot of snow everywhere over a 300 acre cornfield, right? All of that snow is now being driven by your 30,

[00:38:27] 40 mile an hour winds across the road. And everywhere it slows down, it piles up on the road a little bit. So now you have 200 acres of 12 inches deep of snow, all trying to blow across a 400 yard long stretch of highway. That's accurate. She does. She, she prefers to let me drive when there is snow. My wife says, this is why we have snow days and also a husband to drive around.

[00:38:54] My wife is also a bit of a passenger princess. That's all right. But in the winter we drive her G-balms everywhere cause she has heated seats and I don't. Well, that is nice, but I'm not going to lie. This experience recently has made me consider just a little bit putting heated seats in the truck. Not for myself cause I, I'm a, I'm a male. So I just regularly am a body temperature like mammals do,

[00:39:21] but mostly so that my wife will actually like, you know, ride with me in the truck somewhere before like, you know, August. Yeah. So was there anything else we need to cover about snowpocalypse on the Gulf coast? Like I, I, I accept the good natured crap from everybody about, oh, it only snowed two inches in Louisiana or it only snowed 10 inches and they all act like it's

[00:39:45] the apocalypse. But like, I just, I don't know how to explain it to people that are not from this part of the country. Any amount of snow is a problem. Any amount of time at, in the twenties Fahrenheit is a massive problem down here. This entire area is not built for or equipped to deal with these kinds

[00:40:10] of conditions because why would we? And on top of all that, this is the part that terrifies me the most about snow neck. And I've said this before and I'll say this to my dying day. It is not so much that I am frightened of snow. I can drive through it. I can deal with it. I can put on warm clothing. I can, I can deal with it. It's not the problem. What scares me about this kind of weather is that I

[00:40:34] don't trust the other 2 million coolions I got to share the road with. And I know one of those fricking more morons is going to be driving way too fast for the conditions and slide right into the back of my truck or hurt me or my family. And that is always my biggest concern. Oh, that's the worst part of winter up here too. Yeah. That's what I guess I'm saying is like, the first snowfall of the year, everybody panics and freaks out. What, what is that thing Andrew always says? The Grand River flooded. When has that ever happened?

[00:41:04] Exactly. That's never happened twice last year. Yeah. But in this case, the problem is it snowed in Louisiana. What the hell? Both mother nature must've been angry at somebody. Cause like it's, this is the third time it has snowed down here since 1994, when my family moved back to this part of the country. I do not know a better way to explain it to y'all. This is highly unusual.

[00:41:29] And we kind of like muddled through the best way we could. And I am really hoping we don't have another one of these anytime soon, but you know, we made it through my, my daughter got to make some fun memories and make a snowman that got drunk and fell over the next day. My wife got to go outside and tromp around in the snow and have fun. But yeah, I'm, I'm glad that it was what it was. I know now,

[00:41:57] but I also know that like, had we suffered a prolonged power outage, had this turned into an ice storm, like this could have been a very, very unpleasant situation. Yeah, it definitely could. I mean that had you had to use that electric heater, you're going to find out real quick how much juice and electric heater really pulse because that thing is going to have your generator just screaming. It is. I mean, it's one of those like oil filled ones. So yeah, like it's not like the heat strip

[00:42:27] ones, but yes, it's still a dead short bunch power. Yeah, it's like a coffee maker. It's still a dead short heating a liquid trying to bring room temperature up. It's just it's it's power hungry. Yeah, which by that by that token, we had a power outage several months ago and I didn't expect it to last long. So I got a lot here in my behind and pulled out my Jackery 1000 and plug the coffee maker into it. Eight hundred and fifty watts. Mm hmm. I was freaking shocked. Not like I didn't know it.

[00:42:56] Not like I didn't know a coffee like a little like 12 12 pot coffee maker sucks a lot of juice because of the thermal block. But like I just did not expect eight hundred and fifty freaking watts to run this thing. If you pulled the manual out of that little electric heater, it's a thousand watts. Well, all I know is the Jackery 1000 ran it and firmly convinced me that my original supposition that

[00:43:24] using the natural gas burners on top of the stove and like, you know, the little coffee percolator or the French press from the camping set is infinitely more power efficient than electric. Oh, yeah. Electric is convenient, not efficient necessarily. Well, especially when you keep like, you know, 30 pounds of freaking propane on standby and a 15 pound tank you're feeding out of. And that was like one thing I thought of throughout all this was I I've been kicking

[00:43:54] around the idea of of upgrading the home generator at some point. I'm kind of honestly eyeballing like one of those 12 or 13 K tri fuels that I could run off propane. I have a 10 K dual fuel. I need to get the tri fuel carb for it. I've considered it. I mean, I might just get one that can run off propane because it wouldn't hurt my feelings to spend the money on like a pair of hundred pound tanks. And just put them in the backyard, strap them to the wall.

[00:44:23] That way they can't tilt tilt over. And then I don't have to worry about it going bad because it's propane. 200 pounds of propane will run that, you know, a 10 or a 12 K for quite a length of time. Yeah. And then I don't have to feel full with, you know, swapping out gasoline all the time. I don't have to deal with any of that. It's like, here's 200 pounds of propane hurricane season is set. You know, I would recommend avoiding

[00:44:51] the hundred pound cylinders just because of moving them, especially because you got a wife and daughter that are not probably as sturdy as you strong as you. They, they, they call them hundred pound cylinders. They actually weigh a little more than a hundred pounds and they can be kind of awkward lifting and moving those things, especially up into like a pickup or something, man. I have seen people throw their backs out with 80 pound loads, let alone hundred, 120 pound loads. I like the 60 pound cylinders.

[00:45:20] Cause I can very comfortably pick those up, set them in the back of my truck. My wife can move them if she has to. They're, they're not that much less in the same volume of space. All you're losing is a little bit of height and you can buy the tanks for significantly less money. That might be worth looking into. I just know per pound of propane, it ended up like five or seven cents cheaper a pound

[00:45:45] for the tank for the tank size. Yeah. All I know is that if, when we go to upgrade that generator, like I can't suck up the idea of getting like a whole home generac or something like that, not for a house that I know damn good well, we're not staying here, but for hopefully another handful of years, I'd like something I can load up and take with me when we sell this place and go somewhere else.

[00:46:10] And I know I am a hundred percent convinced I want something that could run on propane because or natural gas, natural gas would be great too, because I could have a plumber come in and put a frigging, uh, a shot of valve for how I've actually got a pipe that pokes out the back of the house that was actually meant to feed a gas grill. So it's a fairly small pipe, but I mean, it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all to contact a plumber and have him come out and look at it and

[00:46:36] be like, Hey, can I, can I get a shutoff and a whip put right here? So I could run a run on a generator right on the back porch. You're probably going to need to upgrade the line to at least a three quarter inch. And then you're going to have to upgrade your gas meter as well. Yeah. Because your gas meter is probably not a high flow meter. But at the same time, if I have to spend money on like three 60 pound cylinders, that's 180 pounds of propane. I know I can get that generator run for

[00:47:03] a good long time on those. For me, two 60 pound cylinders of two is two weeks of one hour on four hours off. Yeah. I mean, typically if we have to go more than for a hurricane, if we're out of power more than a week, we shouldn't be there. Right. Like at that, at that point, like hurricane

[00:47:29] Ida came to shore as almost a cat five, a very strong cat four. It hit the North shore. It was still cat three strength. It was one of the more impressive storms I've lived through and that had power out for seven days. Right. So if power is going to be out for like two, three weeks, we shouldn't be here for that. We should be, we should be somewhere else. Well, but you also have to take into account your, so I run my generator at least quarterly just to make sure

[00:47:57] everything's going good. And that does eat a little bit of propane. You know, I probably run it for 20 minutes every time, every quarter. So factor that in what I, what I would like to do. I would like to get one more cylinder on top of the two that I have. That way I can have one that's hot loaded on that's tied into the generator at all times. That's the one I use to run it. And then I've got my two weeks of don't touch stuck there and then rotate through as I use those cylinders up.

[00:48:25] And see what I think I would do in that situation is, is like, I've, I've already got three 15 pound cylinders. Cause I, I run my gas grill twice a week, at least roasting coffee and everything. So like I would probably just use whichever cylinder already had the cap pulled off of it that I was using roast coffee. I'd use that for that quarterly 20 minute run. And then the two 15 pound cylinders that are just sitting there, they stay sitting there until one

[00:48:52] of them's empty. And the minute that first one runs empty, I swap and then take that one out and get it replaced. So like in my scenario, all of my 60 pound cylinders would be don't touch in case of emergency, except in case of emergency. I just, it's just one of those things where it's like, do, do I need a 10 or a 12 K now? We would definitely run your furnace and probably your whole home AC. Honestly. Yeah. Do the ones I'm looking at have a 50 amp out. And when I got this

[00:49:21] interlock kit installed on the house, I was very specific with the electrician about, listen, I'm only putting a 30 amp on there, but wire the damn thing for 50 amps in case you upgrade the generator. Yeah. I told him flat out. I'm like, there's every likelihood that at some point in the future, I'm probably going to upgrade the generator. And when I do, I'm not going to monkey around with another 30 amp. I'm going to go to a 50 amp. So why not put the wiring in for 50 amp?

[00:49:49] That way, when we come to the, when I come to the point of trying time to upgrade, I need a breaker. I changed the outside box. The wiring is already run. Why not? It just makes, makes life simple. And quite frankly, that electrician was so easy to work for. And so re his rates were so reasonable. I would almost certainly call him back out to do it again. Yeah. Even though at this point I could

[00:50:14] probably do it myself because it ain't, he's done the hard work. True. But it's just one of those things where it's like, I told him up front, I'm like, wire the thing for 50 amps. So when the day comes that I go to a 50 amp generator, I need a generator, a gen cord, a breaker and an outside hide hookup. But the hard work has already been dealt with. Yeah. The only thing about going to those smaller propane cylinders to run a generator is depending on your draw, you might draw the propane

[00:50:42] too fast from that size tank and freeze up, freeze up the tank, depending on your ambient outside temperature. Yeah. That's, that's one of the big reasons I went to a bigger tank because they do claim mine can run off of one of those 20 pound grill pots. But they did say that in temperatures, I think it was below 30 degrees, which is much of my winter, pretty

[00:51:05] much all of it. Um, it would freeze up on a 20 pound pot. So something to bear in mind. No, I mean that that's perfectly reasonable. I mean, my most likely scenario be using this for hurricane preps. Right. Absolutely. If it's, if it's 30 degrees outside and a hurricane hits, I quit. I'm just done. It's a snow, a cane. No, at that point, that's a Nopa cane. That's that's mother Nate. Somebody needs to sit mother nature down and tell her to calm down. And

[00:51:35] I understand that telling mother nature to calm down doesn't work any better than telling any woman to calm down. But somebody needs to tell mother nature to calm down at that point. Cause she's, she has exceeded her limit. That's fair. Well, I don't know if we want to dig in any of these other topics you threw in unless you think we can get through them in eight minutes. No, we're definitely not getting through it in eight minutes, but we could, uh, we could queue that up for next time if you want. Yeah. So Nick, Andrew, I don't know if you'll be

[00:52:04] able to join us next week or not. You know, you're always welcome. We miss you, but we get it that your work schedule is being very work. Yeah, no, I only get, uh, I only get every other Thursday off. So that's crap. Um, we'd like to have you when we can, man. Yeah. I'll be, I'm like the,

[00:52:23] I'm the new, new guest reoccurring, reoccurring co-host, recurring character. Yeah. But on the upside, um, I guess as we start to wrap the show up, um, so I've already announced this on in the patron signal chat, I've put this on Patreon. Like we've been, I have tried to get the word out. So

[00:52:47] I'm going to do it one time here on the public show for any of you knuckleheads that haven't gotten the message up till now. The matter of facts, camping trip, it is son of an SOB. What the hell date? It's in June. Man, you're with me, bear, bear with me while I be act like a complete noob

[00:53:08] because I can't ever do any of my MOF camping trip. So 23rd to the 27th, 23rd through the 27th is going to be in Michigan this year. I don't know how much more I want to give away because quite frankly, I don't want, uh, you know, just like every rando on the internet showing up. No offense to you randos on the internet, but you know what I mean? But, um, if you are a patron and you

[00:53:37] have not yet heard about this, you should hear about it right now. Um, you can reach out to me through the contact sheet, through Patreon, through Signal, any kind of way you want. And I'll give you the details. Um, last I checked cabins at that location are going very, very, very quickly, if not already gone, but there are several other places to camp in the local area.

[00:54:00] But the idea behind the matter of facts, camping trip has always been that like, we don't do wrapper stuff. We don't run around in the woods with night vision and body armor during daylight hours. We try not to get profiled by our spouses and girlfriends, but you know, at night it's, it's whatever kind of nonsense you're into. Um, honestly, it's just a big group of friends that like spend the weekend or the week camping and hanging out and we drink a lot and we smoke a lot

[00:54:29] cigars and we share a lot of meals and we just get to know each other. I'll have to find a hike to do while we're up there. I'm sure that won't be super difficult in that area. Yeah. Well, where we're going to be is not in the upper peninsula, but it's like a bridge ride in a mile and a half from the upper peninsula. So it looks like it's going to be beautiful country, but that's the big thing about the matter of facts, camping trip. It is going to be in Michigan this year. Every year we pick a

[00:54:56] different spot to go to. Sorry, Nick, I'm not coming to Illinois because y'all I wouldn't come here either. Yeah. I mean, maybe, maybe like in a neighboring state, if any of those are cool, but Oh, I know some good ones. No, you know, there's some good ones in Wisconsin. We could try to do one of these days, but, uh, yeah, I'll be there for this summer. I think Andrew, you'll be there, right? Well, he's gotta be, but I mean, I could stop in by Grand Rapids and gag and bag you. Maya

[00:55:25] would help me tie you up. I do know the layout of his house. I don't know the layout of his house, but I, but his I'm my wife and his girlfriend talk. I'm pretty sure we can smooth talk her into, um, assisting with a black bag operation. Oh, a hundred percent. She sounds like not being there. So good. Come meet all three of us. I'm going to bring them a pupper. Yeah. If, if,

[00:55:53] if your accommodations accommodate pets, pets are welcome. Kids are welcome. Bring your spouses and girlfriends or spouses, husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, whoever, whoever you hold dear in your heart. I don't know if I would bring your spouse's girlfriend though. That could get a bit awkward. That could be fun to watch though. Entertainment for days, but yeah, if, if you haven't heard about it now, you've heard about it. We've done rambling about it. You can reach out to us for information and we'd love to meet you if you're a patron. And if you're not a patron

[00:56:22] and you're in the Michigan area, and this sounds like a bucket of fun, then you should probably consider supporting the show for a dollar a month because it goes to a group of sadistic knucklehead troublemakers. But you know, we're fun, sadistic knucklehead troublemakers at least. Yeah. And we get to harass Phil into buying new shit. Listen, boys and girls, that shotgun has tapped out Phil's harassment budget for a hot minute. So now we have to harass Nick. Best of luck.

[00:56:52] All right, let's go ahead and sew this one up. I have to go check on my wife. She, I think, was cooking dinner, but she might be plotting my demise too because it could be both. Could be both. Could be both at the same time, honestly. As long as she's not making a rhubarb pie, you're probably safe. Thanks for that mental image. You're welcome. All right. Matter of fact, it's going out the door. Good night, everybody. Say it. Night. Night.