[T3] Southern dis-comfort

[Jim Adney]

When I started this thread, I just thought of it as a way to share a 
bit of winter distraction since few of us seemed to be thinking about 
our Type 3s this time of year. I figured that a little snow down 
south might make life interesting for some of you, but I had no idea 
that this was going to get as bad as it has.

A little bit of snow is one thing, but ice storms are a whole 
different matter. That's serious business.

And flooding, in England. I had no idea. Then Dave sent his post, and 
later that night I surfed across the BBC news and found film of the 
Thames valley with miles and miles of flooded farms and homes.

A bit of snow can be inconvenient, but seldom that big a deal.

Ice storms pulling down trees and power lines are serious. I hope 
Marion's gas log fireplace serves him well, but never becomes truly 
necessary.

But flooding is tragic. They showed southern England in our national 
news last night. Are you well away from that, Dave?

I think it was the winter of '76-77 that we had a big ice storm here 
in southern Wisconsin. Our neighborhood was without power for 3 days, 
which meant that it was also pretty much without heat. We could run 
the gas stove for short periods, and I could manually run that old 
gas furnace and get some heat by convection, also for short periods. 
But it really wasn't too bad. The weather wasn't really all that 
cold, so the temp inside the house never got much below 50 F.

It weeks before everyone in this region got their power back, so we 
were lucky.

We took walks around the neighborhood at night, which was different, 
because everything was dark. I came across one downed power line 
which was sizzling on the wet ice, melting its way down to the 
ground. Don't know the voltage, but I kept clear of it by 3-4 feet. 
An amazing sight.

The real attraction that night was the lightshow on the horizon. We 
could see bright flashes as power lines parted in the distance, and 
could hear occasional booms as something, possibly transformers, 
exploded.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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