HikeArizona.COM

The endless chatter of weather.

The snow is not melting here in Eagar. I have been to the store several times, and the driving is on packed snow, not too slippery if you have front wheel drive. I go very slowly. The main drag has been plowed and cindered, so you can see a little bit of pavement.

I am driving to the Valley tomorrow via Globe, and plan to leave a bit earlier than I had originally planned.

Negative 8 (-8) at 10pm here in Flag. My nose hairs are twitching!

I don't have any nose hairs. I don't have a thermometer any more, either. The NOAA site said it was minus 17 at 3 a.m. at St. Johns airport, which is about 1,300 feet lower and 25 miles away. So, I am thinking it is 20 to 25 below zero here, at least. My pipes are frozen. I had to go poo in the backyard in the snow. (My other option was to drive to Circle K and use the restroom there.) I am going to have to turn the water off at the street before I leave for the Valley today. I am not sure if I will have burst pipes or not (have had one once before) but I sure don't want a flood here when I come back. There is no way to find out until things warm up.

Actually I may have a thermometer. I am going to go look for it. Will report back soon.

EDIT: Ok, found a thermometer that goes to only 10 below. What good is that? I put it out on the porch and the red line disappeared into the little bulb at the bottom, below the -10. Later on today I will ask around to find out what other people's thermometers were reading. (Maybe the latest Grisham, who knows?) And I will report back again. I can only IMAGINE what it must be like in Greer or Alpine right about now! Sheesh! I would guess it could go to minus 30.

Ok, I finally hit on the idea of checking the Springerville Airport website. I was kind of astonished at what I found. TWENTY FIVE DEGREES BELOW ZERO.

Ok, you Valley folks, quit your whining!

Anyway, it is warm inside my house. And our water heater is still giving us water, so we are using that, very sparingly. We also have a couple gallons in the pantry. I really should go to the store right now to buy some more gallons of drinking water. I have a feeling that other people will be doing likewise, and then it will be all gone. I also have a feeling that my plumber, who lives right next door, is going to be very busy later on today or during this coming week, fixing broken pipes.

I am going to leave for the Valley at about 10 a.m. but other family members will still be here. I am not sure how they will deal with it all. I don't actually LIVE here any more, after all. (But I may get stuck with the plumbing bill, if there is one. I am the only one who can pay it.)

Only -18 for our low here in Flagstaff!, -28 up at the Canyon. It was -17 when I got up at 530 and it is -16 now. I'm going out to walk around in it and really get my nostril hairs twitching. Liz, you have them, they just might not be as big as men's nose hairs.

It's just so cold outside that my heater simply won't stop running. I have it set at 63 and it appears to be struggling to keep my apartment at 62.8. That is why I am up so early as I can't sleep when my heater is on like this. Only -17 now, we slipped back to -17 in the early 7 am hour. According to the Weather Channel, it is still -18 up at the San Francisco Peaks reporting location (Snowbowl). All the better to insanely hike Humphrey today!

The good news is that my old Honda Accord started up just fine a few minutes ago. I am pretty sure that my house temp is hovering in the low 60's.

We slipped back down to -18 at 8 AM. Trouble is, I don't know if my apartment was just inadequately built in 2006, if something is broken, or if demand is too high for gas pipeline supply, because my apartment temperature keeps falling with the heat running constantly, the air coming out of my heat vents is not warm, and my hot water is barely warm when running at full blast from a pipe. I turned up the water heater to it's hottest setting when I moved in back in 2006 and that is usually plenty hot. My water heater is in a small closet which I opened up and found to be freezing inside. My walk outside was interesting. Things start to burn from the cold really fast, and my nose airs were really freezing together.

Turns out, there is an apartment complex wide issue with the fuses on the (separate units) water heater and heating units. Apparently, they blew out last night. They sure picked a very inconvenient time to do so. It is still -9 outside. At least the sun came up and my apartment has warmed to warm 62, up from 61.

Does Hawley Lake even have a weather station anymore? Alltime Arizona low was recorded there at -40.

Here in Tempe, I had 25.7, nearly two degrees cooler than last night. I'll be cutting off dead branches from plants in a few weeks.

PS Styled as "code" so it all lines up

Code: Select all

...NEW RECORDS...
 
 CITY (PERIOD OF RECORD)            NEW LOW       PREVIOUS RECORD/YEAR
 BAGDAD (1930 - 2011)                   12          19         IN  2007
 COTTONWOOD-TUZIGOOT (1977 - 2011)      13          20         IN  1983
 FORT VALLEY (1909 - 2011)             -28          -19        IN  1912
 MCNARY 2N (1921 - 2011)               -12          -9         IN  1976
 GRAND CANYON S. RIM (1966 - 2011)     -12          -1         IN  1988
 
 ...OBSERVED LOW TEMPERATURES THIS MORNING...
 
 BELLEMONT                             -30
 GRAND CANYON AIRPORT                  -29
 WINDOW ROCK                           -25
 ST. JOHNS                             -22
 MUNDS PARK                            -21
 FLAGSTAFF                             -19
 SHOW LOW                              -13
 PINETOP                                -4
 CANYON DE CHELLY                       -3

My house is 56 degrees right now here in Phoenix. I'm too cheap to turn on the heat.

Cold out on the Rez last night. Page was 19. We were closer to Kaibeto, but a bit higher in elevation - probably close to 0.

I have an electronic thermometer that gives me the high and low for the last 24 hours, and it dropped down to 11 degrees in Prescott. I'm at 5300 feet here.

-19 for Flagstaff was pretty cold, but -28 at Fort Valley and -30 at Bellemont pretty much blows -19 away. They think it will only be -6 tonight. We'll see.

Jim_H wrote:-30 at Bellemont pretty much blows -19 away

Yeah, but it's a dry cold.

Actually, it was quite humid when it was that cold, making it a wet cold.

Wow, -30 at Bellemont? The place with all the ticky tacky houses? I bet there are more than a few frozen pipes over there!

I have a friend who lives out there, I'll ask her if her pipes froze. Someone I know who lives in the new houses (built in 2007) near the Flag airport had some frozen pipes. I just don't see how you can build a house in this day and age, with our abundance of insulation options, and still have pipes freeze? It isn't as though Flagstaff is known for mild winters with no negetive temperatures. Sure, -19 or -30 is extreme, but every year I have lived here we have had a well below zero night at least once, often several of them at different times.
"Ticky Tacky"? I thought that expression went out with the Kennedy Administration. But yes, Bellemont is the first large "park" west of Flag where there are those houses that got hit by the tornadoes, Camp Navajo is located and the Pilot travel stop is, too.

Jim_H wrote:"Ticky Tacky"? I thought that expression went out with the Kennedy Administration.

It's also the opening theme to a Showtime series...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8StRAJCork

Yeah, but that uses the original song "Little Boxes" from 1962 making fun of the suburban development which was relatively new at the time. Besides, Liz isn't a TV watcher and doesn't have cable. I do like how everyone in the opening looks and behaves exactly the same, though.