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phdhorn

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Posts posted by phdhorn

  1. Well that was fun! The gorgeous blues of a clear sky weren't visible but otherwise pretty cool. That last minute where it gets geometrically darker/faster is still something to behold.  Also cool to compare the two (2017) for me. BTW roosters did start crowing here and birds definitely stopped completely, we were looking for that and got it.

    BTW, this was the one hope I/many others had - a recently-discovered confirmation of a long-believed phenomenon. This article is why the clouds parted enough when it seemed like all hope was lost. A quick and good read.

    https://www.sciencealert.com/clouds-vanish-during-a-solar-eclipse-and-we-finally-know-why

    Talk to you in 300 years when the next one hits ATX!

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  2. 13 hours ago, Born to Run said:

    TLDR

    Spanish oaks?

    Homestead, next door.

    Learned last night that Austin Energy issued an apology to us over the news, neighbor captured screenshot but I haven't seen it yet. I guess that's a start!

  3. One more time.

    Precip over for CenTex, as expected not a big deal. Weather services did really good on this event, which is not easy.

    Travel E of U.S. 77 today dicey - because icy. Take care.

    Finally, a little "glad I'm not that guy" satisfaction by relative position comment.  Yesterday Austin had about 174 customers without power max in the day.

    171 of them were my neighborhood.

    Power went out about 9:45 a.m. Sunday. After the usual AE claptrap on their outage site, and a seeming update (2 hours est. restore, which was goalpost-moved about 6 times), they extended the estimated fix out to midnight (from about noon when they gave us that one). Missus and i said skrew that, we hopped on over to a nice hotel in Lakeway for the evening - good decision.  Then we read a cryptic share posted by our Bee Cave Mayor (Bee Cave has one and it's not (quite) Gomer Pyle or Helen Crump). She was sharing blamespeak by AE, stuff like "when the developer put this in he did blah blah.." and tech speak like "we need to have a loop return to allow multiple access to the location"  - sounded more like a sex ed talk on fertilization than electric stuff. But what got us was this part: "We have yet to determine the actual location of the break (although somehow they seemed to know enough to blame it on "someone digging" - yet no name, location, or purpose given. Ni-i-i-ce deflection). So "after 4 hours we have no idea what happened or where to try and find the problem." Beautiful. The days before, I spent some time prepping the well as usual with space heater and a few lights, always works. But now there was no power to it - would it be pointless? That was about my only worry, the rest I said we'd deal with if/when. But we were not gonna sit in a cold house staring at dying phones.  Eventually they gave "good news" on the outage app - our power would return by 7:30 p.m. Sure enough, neighbors reported power at about that time - followed by a flickering over the next hour - followed by power going out - again. Oops. No problem, you guys are pros. Apparently acc. to neighbor texts, power finally restored w/o flickering 1:30 a.m. We returned home from a great relaxing stay by about 10:30 this a.m. House warm water flowing(!) except for final stop (bathroom faucets). I opened cabinets and expect it to thaw, keeping an eye out for problems. But we have water! 

    3 ice/major cold event, 3 power fails. Neighborhood is pissed. We're going to go to the mayor with pitchforks and tell her to get someone from AE out here to do a damn assessment of the infrastructure. If the neighborhood wiring is akin to the Douglas phone-on-the-pole on Green Acres, then we want to know so we can outlay to fix it. "The way it was done 50 years ago" is complete bullshit. AE ran a Usain Bolt dash out here in the 70's to claim electric here with Pedernales in the area. So now, you bastiges fix it. Yeah, like that'll happen. The '21 storm I can sort of understand (though we found out our outage was due to a transformer blow and power would have remained on otherwise). The '23 Ice Dump - again a piece of infrastructure went kerplunk and we were without for 24+ hours. This one? Proud to say that in the vast, great expanse of the Greater Austin Metroplex, one neighborhood - one tiny, lil' group of settlements - mine - was out - the ONLY group outage all day. We're gonna do some stuff and stuff to get some answers. Not cool. 

    Most of the time, the fear and paranoia preceding one of these events is regrettable if not funny (though after '21 peoples' anxieties can certainly be more understood). But apparently in our enclave, if you get below 30°, those scenarios are real. This isn't a destitute area and we want answers - the authorities say they'll give them to us after this - but of course we'll see. But if it's time to upgrade something, then DO IT. 

    I do have a 15K big honking generator that will easily power the entire house if needed. So why didn't I set it up? Good question but long answer. However next time I'll probably drag the SOB out and get it ready if needed. With this event, even with our recent history, I couldn't conceive of losing power - ERCOT had a lot, there was NO precip (at least power-killing kind) in this forecast, zip. I thought no problem. Wrong [Trump meme].

    Half-confidently expect power to hold, if not we'll motor it to the hotel for another night. So much better.

    So yeah, you weren't "that guy."

    See ya at the next weather disaster - whether real or overblown. Stay cool.

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  4. 7 minutes ago, boknowstecmo said:

    Looks like strong rotation just south of Bee Cave. 

    Screenshot_20230302-192649.png

    For all of this bluster, only one little hail core in the entire Travis county area and it went right over my house and is moving into Southwest and South austin. But it's small hail.

  5. The little cell passing over me right now has small hail, nothing damaging, 50 to 60 mph winds and it's moving right toward oak Hill and South austin. Don't think it'll be real bad but could knock a few things around.

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  6. Pretty nasty cell near the bottom of the line going through Gillespie right now. Looks like some hail and strong winds. Just fyi, still has a lot of ground to cover before it gets here. Most of it will skirt north of metro. The northern Travis and Georgetown keep an eye out.

  7. Just wanted to duck in to say that if you're getting alerts in Spanish, you shouldn't worry unless you're Hispanic. Those storms never hit English-speaking peoples' houses.

    Don't get me started...

    Anyway, I won't be back (?).. hopefully.

    • Haha 4
  8. Most of the worst will be north of us, if just north. Gonna be a good spread of tornadoes in NE TX into SEC country tonight. Not pretty.

    For ATX, wouldn't surprise me if a Severe Thunderstorm Watch is issued, but the models have kept the Big Red Target NE of us up to now, so that's not changing. Biggest worry is straight line winds over a 5-6 mile spot somewhere, and hail in very scattered pockets. I ain't really worried about it at this point, luckiest guess is some poor spot around ATX will get some quarter sized hail and wind damage. But pinpoint. That's what I see right now.

    Line has formed but southern end is ebbing and flowing, north half is pretty nasty, around Waco to Metroplex... we'll see what happens as it hits warm air somewhere around us. 

    We'll know by about 6:30 what we're in for if anything... bulk of it should hit about 7-8 in ATX. I won't be back unless bad things start to happen 'round here.

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  9. Wanted to give notice of this in case you missed it. Almanza was a two-time Olympian for Mexico and leading scorer and rebounder for UT during his tenure. Quite a guy. His kids are in their 50's and his son is a pretty successful lawyer in town.

    My wife went to Austin High with his daughter, suffice it to say it was a long and painful decline and finally he's out of pain. Just thought some of you might want to read up on a UT basketball Legacy. He lived in the Barton hills area and his funeral was this morning.

    https://www.statesman.com/story/sports/college/longhorns/mens-basketball/2023/01/30/albert-almanza-former-texas-longhorns-basketball-player-olympian-dies/69851330007/

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