Zompist Bboard Again

alice wrote: ↑Tue Jan 13, 2026 2:28 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Jan 13, 2026 5:52 am
Not really - a bit difficult to take a photo of a house while looking out of one of that house's windows.

You need a bloody large mirror, for a start.

Well, there's that one type of solar energy facility... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power

Here is the forecast for where I live this week. On Friday, the high will be -28 celsius, and the low will be -35 celsius!!! How frigid and frightful! I'm not looking forward to it. Days like this are why I dread winter, and dream of moving somewhere with even slightly warmer weather.

I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

jcb wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:28 am Here is the forecast for where I live this week. On Friday, the high will be -28 celsius, and the low will be -35 celsius!!! How frigid and frightful! I'm not looking forward to it. Days like this are why I dread winter, and dream of moving somewhere with even slightly warmer weather.

I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

Hold in there, jcb! Is that "if you drop your car battery while carrying it to your car, it'll shatter as if it was made of glass" levels of cold?

jcb wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:28 am Here is the forecast for where I live this week. On Friday, the high will be -28 celsius, and the low will be -35 celsius!!! How frigid and frightful! I'm not looking forward to it. Days like this are why I dread winter, and dream of moving somewhere with even slightly warmer weather.

I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

Oh my… I’m glad I’m not there.

jcb wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:28 am Here is the forecast for where I live this week. On Friday, the high will be -28 celsius, and the low will be -35 celsius!!! How frigid and frightful! I'm not looking forward to it. Days like this are why I dread winter, and dream of moving somewhere with even slightly warmer weather.

I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

I have just shivered internally and stopped complaining about the miserable rain.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:34 am

jcb wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:28 am I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

Hold in there, jcb! Is that "if you drop your car battery while carrying it to your car, it'll shatter as if it was made of glass" levels of cold?

What is the freezing point of car battery acid, anyway?

alice wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 2:57 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:34 am

jcb wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 4:28 am I'll have to bring my car's battery inside during the night (and day!) just to assure that my car will start when I need it too.

Hold in there, jcb! Is that "if you drop your car battery while carrying it to your car, it'll shatter as if it was made of glass" levels of cold?

What is the freezing point of car battery acid, anyway?

I’m finding numbers around -60 °C for a fully charged battery. For an uncharged battery the freezing point is, of course, 0 °C.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 3:07 pm

alice wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 2:57 pm

What is the freezing point of car battery acid, anyway?

I’m finding numbers around -60 °C for a fully charged battery. For an uncharged battery the freezing point is, of course, 0 °C.

Now I'm starting to wonder about the wisdom of using battery acid as antifreeze or de-icer.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 3:11 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 3:07 pm

alice wrote: ↑Mon Jan 19, 2026 2:57 pm

What is the freezing point of car battery acid, anyway?

I’m finding numbers around -60 °C for a fully charged battery. For an uncharged battery the freezing point is, of course, 0 °C.

Now I'm starting to wonder about the wisdom of using battery acid as antifreeze or de-icer.

It’s roughly as wise as, say, using bleach as antiviral medication.

(For the uninitiated, battery acid is highly concentrated sulfuric acid, which is extremely corrosive to just about everything.)

I admit, I had kind of expected that.

Travis wrote:Here in Wisconsin we've got a warm continental climate, and it is expected that there will be snow quite a few times each winter and people know how to simply live with it. Adults (who have to drive) don't like snow (as opposed to children who don't have to drive in snow) but treat it as a fact of life regardless. Despite what schoolchildren would want, though, snow days aren't simply handed out here;

Another thought, that Travis already alluded too: The more that a place gets snow or cold, the less leeway and sympathy for being late or missing work or an appointment because of the weather you are given. This is partly practical: if everything did shut down here every time there was an inch of snow, everything would just be shut for (at least) a third of the year, and that just won't do. You are simply expected to deal with it, regardless of your circumstances.

This map showing how much snow it takes to cancel school in America comes to mind:

here, on the shores of the Mediterranean, snow is exceptional, like a white parenthesis that halts all activity for a max of one day every five of years...
nothing like the frequent torrential downpours that are a real threat and make Noah and his ark seem possible...

It feels like winters where I live are still remarkably harsh despite global warming making summers noticeably hotter in recent years. Given the sweltering heat of last summer, I at least expected a mild winter but that hasn't been the case thus far.

It was very cold yesterday. Today it is about the same but with less wind chill.

That looks like more than a yellow warning to me. Apparently half the US is getting one foot (30 cm) or more of snow today, which poses a considerable risk to areas which simply aren't used to snow in the first place. More personally, my plans for the day (canvassing with the DSA) were canceled, which definitely annoys me.

Goddamn it, and my car won't start right as I need supplies. It has been having trouble recently, perhaps because the battery doesn't work well in the cold.

the skinniest girl i know, who afaik has spent her entire life in coastal southern california, is as we speak in the process of moving to chicago in the middle of january. i hope she survives the winter because goddamn

Emily wrote: ↑Sat Jan 24, 2026 4:58 pm the skinniest girl i know, who afaik has spent her entire life in coastal southern california, is as we speak in the process of moving to chicago in the middle of january. i hope she survives the winter because goddamn

Good luck to her.

Emily wrote: ↑Sat Jan 24, 2026 4:58 pm the skinniest girl i know, who afaik has spent her entire life in coastal southern california, is as we speak in the process of moving to chicago in the middle of january. i hope she survives the winter because goddamn

Most Chicagoans survive the winter. We even have skinny girls. You spend your time indoors and perfect the quick dash between car and door.

But tell her to buy a good coat. Not whatever flimsy thing you Californians think is a jacket. I got mine in Montréal, a place where they take winter seriously.

jcb wrote: ↑Tue Jan 20, 2026 12:13 am

Travis wrote:Here in Wisconsin we've got a warm continental climate, and it is expected that there will be snow quite a few times each winter and people know how to simply live with it. Adults (who have to drive) don't like snow (as opposed to children who don't have to drive in snow) but treat it as a fact of life regardless. Despite what schoolchildren would want, though, snow days aren't simply handed out here;

Another thought, that Travis already alluded too: The more that a place gets snow or cold, the less leeway and sympathy for being late or missing work or an appointment because of the weather you are given. This is partly practical: if everything did shut down here every time there was an inch of snow, everything would just be shut for (at least) a third of the year, and that just won't do. You are simply expected to deal with it, regardless of your circumstances.

This map showing how much snow it takes to cancel school in America comes to mind:

Thank you for the map, jcb! Growing up in Northeast Ohio, I knew that we needed to get 5-6 inches (c. 12.5-15 cm) of snow for the schools to be closed, but I wasn’t sure what was the case elsewhere.

(Note that if the temperature dropped low enough, schools might be closed even without snow, if it was considered cold enough to be dangerous. Unfortunately, I do not recall what the cutoff point was, although I know that closures due to cold were rarer than those due to snow.)

Part of the reason that snowier regions tend to have a higher minimum snowfall for snow days is not only that snowfall is more frequent, but that such regions tend to be better prepared for it – state and local governments have fleets of snowplows and road treatment trucks ready to go, residents are more accustomed to driving in snow and ice and clearing it (owning snow shovels, snowblowers, etc.), and private snow removers are often available. (My parents traditionally shoveled their own sidewalk, but now that they are in their eighties, they pay a gentleman who has a pickup truck with a snowplow to clear it for them; they have a choice between paying him for each plowing, or a flat fee for the entire winter.)

Growing up in the Lake Erie “snow belt” (a region on the southeast shore of Lake Erie prone to snowfall caused by moisture blowing off the lake) in the 1970s and 1980s, I was accustomed to regular snowfall during the winter, with occasional heavier cases (such as the blizzard of 1977-78), although over the decades since, snow cover has become less predictable due to climate change.

In the 1990s, I also spent time living in Russia. On my second visit there, I arrived in St. Petersburg in January and lived in Moscow from February through June. When we first arrived in St. Petersburg, I and two of my classmates were able to take a walk offshore on the Gulf of Finland, as the ice was frozen about a foot thick (c. 30 cm), and in Moscow, when spring came, I saw street cleaners chipping ice off of the sidewalk and realized that we had been walking several inches above the ground for the entire winter. (Once again, that was over thirty years ago, and I am not certain whether such winter weather is the rule any more.)

I have now been living for almost two decades in the Washington, DC area, where snowfall is less frequent, with rare but sometimes spectacular exceptions (although ice and frozen rain, which are even more unpleasant, sometimes occur), and I have become less accustomed to cold temperatures, although as it happens, we are facing a cold snap and some potentially heavy snow and ice this weekend (along with a large swathe of the United States), and local residents have been buying up staple groceries, snow shovels, etc. from stores as the snow approaches.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about snow: I enjoy watching the change of the seasons (especially the changing colors of the leaves in the autumn), and I find a landscape of newly fallen snow to be beautiful, but I am not overly fond of cold temperatures, nor of driving in snow (and particularly ice). The way that I once put it, many years ago, is that while I do not necessarily like cold weather, I frequently enjoy the things people use to combat it – fireplaces, sweaters, hot drinks, etc.

With regard to the cold temperatures, snow, and everything else coming through:

@Ahzoh, malloc, Zompist, and everyone else in its path - hope you can stay safe and stay warm!