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Two weeks ago we had a cold snap from a new storm system. Not much snow, no more than 4-6 inches, but that night when I got home around 7pm it was -4f outside according to my car. Wednesday got down to -17, our neighbor next door recorded -19. We had a bit of a problem with frozen pipes in part of our house, but nothing burst.
Not so elsewhere in The Village (of Cloudcroft), on The Mountain (in the Lincoln National Forest), or nearby. We haven't seen temperatures like this for over 25 years. NMSU in Alamogordo was closed for 5 ½ days, the City Hall and city government of Las Cruces for three days. Their City's electric provider, El Paso Electric, was having problems keeping up and ordered rolling brownouts. They even got emergency power from Mexico, until the cold extended down there and Mexico had to stop sending it across the border. The gas utility had low pressure problems from increased demand. We never lost power up here as we're not served by EPE, and we have a propane tank in the back, so we're not dependent on a pipe for that, but the story was different at NMSU-A. Apparently the gas utility, with no warning, shut off the gas to the university. I don't know if it was because of the gas shut-off or frozen water, but several boilers throughout the campus burst, so now the university is suing the utility for interrupting service with no warning. Had they been warned, I guess they could have drained the boilers or something and prevented damage.
But the story continues! In El Paso, because of burst pipes, they now have water supply problems! Apparently the number of leaks is critically draining their water reserves and also caused a bacterial problem requiring a boil water alert. New Mexico Environmental Quality department issued a similar warning for my area, but not for Cloudcroft, so we didn't have to bother with it.
So burst boilers, brown outs, boiling water, and the ice on the road made things kind of interesting. We just hunkered down and didn't leave the house for 4 days and were fine, but had we lost power for any length of tie, it would have been off to the observatory as they have two emergency generators.
Speaking of the observatory, they've always had limits that they had to close the telescope if certain meteorological conditions existed: wind, dust particle count, dew point, etc. They've had to add a couple as the telescope has never experienced temperatures this low. They now can't open if the temperature is below zero, and they lowered the wind limit if the temperature is approaching zero. The issue is strain to the telescope's motors. Standard lubricants have a temperature operating range, and as they get increasingly cold, they act weird. The telescope's motors have to move a 5000+ pound object with amazing precision in order to correctly track celestial objects, and the strain of the lubricant represents unwanted wear and tear on the motors, so they now shut down.
Not so elsewhere in The Village (of Cloudcroft), on The Mountain (in the Lincoln National Forest), or nearby. We haven't seen temperatures like this for over 25 years. NMSU in Alamogordo was closed for 5 ½ days, the City Hall and city government of Las Cruces for three days. Their City's electric provider, El Paso Electric, was having problems keeping up and ordered rolling brownouts. They even got emergency power from Mexico, until the cold extended down there and Mexico had to stop sending it across the border. The gas utility had low pressure problems from increased demand. We never lost power up here as we're not served by EPE, and we have a propane tank in the back, so we're not dependent on a pipe for that, but the story was different at NMSU-A. Apparently the gas utility, with no warning, shut off the gas to the university. I don't know if it was because of the gas shut-off or frozen water, but several boilers throughout the campus burst, so now the university is suing the utility for interrupting service with no warning. Had they been warned, I guess they could have drained the boilers or something and prevented damage.
But the story continues! In El Paso, because of burst pipes, they now have water supply problems! Apparently the number of leaks is critically draining their water reserves and also caused a bacterial problem requiring a boil water alert. New Mexico Environmental Quality department issued a similar warning for my area, but not for Cloudcroft, so we didn't have to bother with it.
So burst boilers, brown outs, boiling water, and the ice on the road made things kind of interesting. We just hunkered down and didn't leave the house for 4 days and were fine, but had we lost power for any length of tie, it would have been off to the observatory as they have two emergency generators.
Speaking of the observatory, they've always had limits that they had to close the telescope if certain meteorological conditions existed: wind, dust particle count, dew point, etc. They've had to add a couple as the telescope has never experienced temperatures this low. They now can't open if the temperature is below zero, and they lowered the wind limit if the temperature is approaching zero. The issue is strain to the telescope's motors. Standard lubricants have a temperature operating range, and as they get increasingly cold, they act weird. The telescope's motors have to move a 5000+ pound object with amazing precision in order to correctly track celestial objects, and the strain of the lubricant represents unwanted wear and tear on the motors, so they now shut down.
