As Cold Fronts Hit America, Half a Million Lose Power - Slashdot

Posted by EditorDavid

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    not going much of anywhere when there's a eighth inch of ice in Detroit, snow is easy ice is glued down for a day or 2

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    Won't help because the outages are from downed power lines. Sorry to spoil your gloat.

• • • Re: The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon

      Why the race fixation? "People who share the same objectives, either globally or currently".

• The drought they've been experiencing for years [latimes.com] is slowly being rolled back as a series of storms have hit the state over the past few months. Even the higher elevations are seeing significant snowfall which means a decent run off come spring/summer.

  Considering how much food comes from California, anything short of a monsoon will be welcomed. The state has recently been working to ensure it gets what it needs [fastcompany.com] from the Colorado River to the detriment of closer populations.

  • The drought they've been experiencing for years [latimes.com] is slowly being rolled back as a series of storms have hit the state over the past few months. Even the higher elevations are seeing significant snowfall which means a decent run off come spring/summer.

    Unfortunately it's going to take years to replenish the water in the aquifers that have been heavily mined during the drought.

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      Too much of that rainwater is washing out to sea.

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        Same as every state. When the rain falls near the coast there's not much to catch it. It needs to be inland and in quantities that allow it to soak into the ground and fill the aquifers. A storm with flooding all at once just causes things to drain off to the sea; part of the reason flooding even happens in the flat lands is because the ground saturates and won't hold more.

        • Re: California needs the rain

          You do know that, at least in Los Angeles, they channel it directly into the ocean, right? The major exception is Marina del Rey, because they don't want all of the urban pollutants washing into an area that Hollywood celebrities often visit and/or live in, so they channel it around that to places like Venice, where even the houses are made out of tents.

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          Or you know, they could use their channel system to fill their still-not-full reservoirs.

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      The aquifers aren't going to be replenished.

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        That's what they told us the last time a drought was busted here in the Northeast. "These downpours aren't doing anything"

        I was quite skeptical. Yes it makes a certain amount of sense that if there are downpours, there will be more runoff. But the ground has a pretty good ability to absorb water. be it a gentle kissing from god to the earth of light drizzle, or deluges reminiscent of the great flood.

        And remarkably, the groundwater recharged nicely.Drought went away, and we've been pretty damp ever sinc

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      Central Valley has been mining the aquifers for decades close to a century now. I think the land has dropped 28' so far. And the answer has been to just stick the straw down deeper to irrigate those almond trees.

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      That is true, but ya gotta start somewhere when breaking a drought. Your statement reminds me of the last drought we had in the Northeast. Maybe 15 years ago. Droughts break like they do, often quickly and with a lot of rain.

      The weather people were whining about how with the torrential rain, almost none of it soaks into the ground. It's almost all runoff that goes to the oceans. So don't get happy about these downpours people - that aren't doing any good. What is needed is several years of constant light

  • From what I've read, what really happened is that we moved into California and started recording rainfall during an unusually wet period, and thus set "drought conditions" to be more "normal weather", than what a real Californian drought would be.

    IE the land is dryer, on average, then what they figured on. Of course, they still set water usage rights to 110% of the already inflated rainfall estimates.

    In addition, you have a problem with the farmers using the most wasteful forms of irrigation because they weren't being charged for the water at all, nor limited in its use.

    From what I've read, the farmers could drastically cut water use for their crops - but that would cost a good deal of money to update irrigation systems and methods.

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      Farmers do pay for the use of water, but it's usually a flat rate. But the biggest issue is the use it or lose it part that's enshrined in law. Farmers are by nature very conservative people (in the literal sense), so saving water is actually something most farmers really want to do. But if irrigation districts reduce their consumption, they will lose rights to that water permanently. It's way more nuanced than you make it. The laws need to change, no doubt about it. Farmers need to be able to lease or s

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      Much of the San Joaquin valley was a lake for several months a year even as recently as 100 years ago. Draining it for farms means it doesn't go into aquifers. Then the irrigation and town water came from pumping out of the aquifers - enough so that the average elevation dropped dozens of feet and caused damage to roads, buildings, canals, over the decades. The aquifer can't recover to original levels even if people leave because the ground compacted and compressed.

      Many farmers are changing irrigation me

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      The medium-term (decades) weather in the western US is unstable.
      
      Depending on (or at least, strongly correlated with) the phases of various ocean mean temperature fluctuations, the US west experiences either wetter weather (early/late 1900s) or drier weather (late 1800s, mid 20 century, 21st century so far). And it's absolutely correct that current water agreements were signed early in the 20th century, during an era of significantly higher rainfall than currently prevails on average.
      
      The problem is bei

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    Unsure here. The reservoirs are not filling up. Getting 50% more rain that normal in one month does not erase 8 years of drought. It's nice in the mountains but it's had very low snow pack over the last several years also. We'd need another good month of rain, and also not a drought in 2024, then we can stop holding our breaths.

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    Thank Crom it's not humans who caused the climate change. I feel so relieved just by saying that. We should also do nothing to prevent it because some people will profit from it. Enough sarcasm... climate change is such an obvious issue too many people are still ignoring that will be the death of us and so many species on this once beautiful planet. Maybe we should just drop the bombs and end it rather sooner than later. Go on I challenge you.

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    That's not how anything works. The land and water infrastructure can only absorb so much, and after that you just get flooding and runoff. What we need is extended periods of light to moderate rain, not any amount of heavy rain.

• I was going to recommend a portable generator, and one of those Chinese diesel heaters if you live in a place where there's a possibility of freezing to death if your power goes out. You're looking at between $250 to $800 (depending on brand and features) for a portable generator that'll run all your small electronics and keep the lights and fridge going, and around $120 or so for the diesel heater.

  But then I remembered California is banning ICE-powered generators in 2028. Not sure how California feels ab

  • Well, some quick review says that you'll really want to buy one now then, because the ban is on SALES not USE.

    That said, at least some solar(even if not enough to run HVAC) + at least a small battery and the necessary functionality to disconnect from the grid would work.

    As for the diesel heaters - probably not on their scope, plus it's easy to not have them produce excessive NOx and such.

    Finally, it only affects gasoline generators - if you really need one, diesel and propane are still an option. Given my experience with other bans involving California, I fully expect that stores will sell "repair" and "conversion" kits, depending on what the law states, that will "repair" a new propane generator to be able to use gasoline. Given that propane generators are really gasoline ones with different carburetors and fuel source on them. Though you might not have the nice integrated tank.

    Or you'll just have to run propane tanks more.

    I'll also note that due to medical use by at least some, they'll probably sneak in an exemption in the next 5 years or so if longer term battery backups + solar doesn't address the problem - even if it ends up being a smaller solar install that is JUST for the medical devices.

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      During the pandemic, I bought a portable Honda generator and immediately converted it to Propane without putting a single drop of gasoline through it. Because when the gasoline in your generator has turned to varnish through lack of use, your generator isn't going to work when you need it.

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      Yes, stationary generators that are typically installed for a whole-house backup solution are exempt. I have doubts propane is truly a loophole for portable generators, because as you said, it is trivial to run a small gasoline engine from propane and there'd probably be a big market for propane powered lawn equipment if that was an acceptable workaround. Here in Florida though, propane is kind of expensive and it's more cost effective to just stock up on gas prior to an approaching storm, then dump it in

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      Banning the SALE and not USE of something only postpones the problem by the roughly 2 years it takes until the thing craps out on you because of its prospective "lifetime".

      Remember, we need our appliances to be cheap and that means that they are built to be replaced soon because, well, profit is in selling, not in you using it forever.

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        If you can go to a neighboring state and buy it, then not only is this a suitable workaround, but a whole industry will appear around making this as easy as possible. There will be a generator store just across the state border on all the major highways. This is exactly how liquor prohibition works with dry counties, too. Liquor stores just open up as near as possible. You'll still be able to buy parts, and nine times out of ten what goes wrong on a small engine is in the carburetor... and you replace the w

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          So technically, just like the internet treats censorship like damage and routes around it, citizens treat silly laws like damage and route around it.

          Can't say I don't like it.

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        Are you often telling people to buy expensive shit that wont last 2 years?
        
        Are you made of fucking money? Time to fucking share.

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    I spent two days this week without power. The internet still worked, so I just piled blankets on and continued as normal. California doesn't get very cold.
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    As has been already brought up, this is false. It's a ban on sales, not use. On the other hand, it's already illegal to use a generator in most California cities of any significant size, and also illegal to store any meaningful amount of fuel for them. Even propane tanks are limited in size in many cases.

    However, if you live in the sticks, it's generally legal to store a drum of diesel, or big propane tanks, so the people who are most likely to need a generator can have one. (Gasoline generators are the dum

• >"This week one political cartoonist suggested a connection between "crazy weather" and climate change."

  Like that is any surprise.

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    Sorry I don't understand your post. Are you saying something about Politico ignoring the fact that satirical comics for news agencies the world over have been posting similar comics for the past 5 years?

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      > are you saying something about Politico

      That seems likely. Politico is just a club for neeredowell reporters who suck up to power to get a 'scoop'. It never is - just a made up narrative.

      And that linked cartoon isn't even a little bit clever. It's the same meme that's been circulating for two decades.

      The midwits get off on this kind of content, so they're writing for their audience, which is one business model. This editor seems happy, for instance.

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        ^ Bingo, on all counts

• Remember nuclear power is the most reliable form of electricity.

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    Nuclear's need for copious amounts of cool water is its Achilles heel. If their water source gets too warm, freezes, or dries up, nuclear plants have to cut their power output or shut down to avoid overheating. We saw that during Europe's heat wave last year.

    So nuclear actually struggles with the same weather events that cause problems for everything else, on top of being hideously expensive to build and operate.

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      > hideously expensive to build and operate

      Sometimes saving human lives is worth expense.

      Not everybody thinks so.

      RIP all those solar and wind installers falling to their deaths.

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    Only when it's cold. When it's hot it sucks arse which is why Germany was exporting wind and solar power to France last summer.

• As a die-hard Slashdot Liberal, I insist that power is restored to California and Detroit immediately, so that I can continue to complain about how Texas power infrastructure is more broken even though there were vastly fewer people in Texas that lost power in 2023 ice storms than in California.

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    I'm in Houston, we haven't had an ice storm in 2023. Today it was about 80 degrees.

    There was an ice storm before Christmas 2022, that mostly caused water main breaks.

    If you're thinking of the 2021 storm, there were 10 million out of power, so about 100x the figure of 126,000 in California cited in the article.

    • Umm.... umm.

      I'm in Houston, we haven't had an ice storm in 2023.

      I lived in Houston before, and at that point it was not quite big enough to encompass the entire state of Texas....

      And I guess it still isn't, because while you might not have had an ice storm in 2023 other people in Texas (specifically Austin) did [npr.org].

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      I live in Austin, there was an ice storm in Feb of 2023. Austin Energy had roughly half of the customers down. Some without power for over 6 days (actually 2 weeks for some unlucky few). The city's manager was fired over it. Although fear not he got 1/2mil payout to go. Lack of tree trimming was the problem. Austin did not learn from 2021. Or any of the other winter/ice storms that occur about every 5 to 10 years. I know I was out for 5 days in I think it was 2001 also.

• The reasons people in the US lose power after storms come in two varieties.

  1. "Last mile" downage of above ground powerlines or infrastructure due to the elements. Rotting older wooden power poles and substations and generators that can't handle being "buried" in snow or pooling water have been this way for the last century. More modern countries either use underground facilities, or facilities hardened against the elements. It's not as political as one might think -- neither of the two parties find fun

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    Politicians are too busy with important things like outlawing women's reproductive rights & vaccines, arguing over the right to self-identify as whatever, & whether Trump lost due to election fraud to be bothered by useless things like infrastructure.

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    I'll post this one more time. TX grid IS connected to E/W US grids. As I write this it looks like around 250MW is being imported to TX. https://www.ercot.com/gridmkti... [ercot.com] TX grid is NOT managed by the same entity as the rest of the US grid. E/W are also tied by DC ties not by synchronous AC. There is also a wiki on how the US (& Cananda) is interconnected. It is not one giant AC grid. The interconnects are limited in their power exchange. There are also limits on how much power can traverse the lines. On

• I see what you did there

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    Well, you have to admit, this is unusual, if not to say, special.

• California gets lots of snow, just not at such low altitudes. I just got back online after a couple days and here's what I saw directly: roughly a foot (30cm) of heavy, wet "Sierra Cement" and this is at about 1600 ft. elevation in the *coast ranges*, not even the foot hills where might be a bit more expected.

  The vegetation here hasn't seen anything like this in decades. There are some species of oak that lose their leaves like back east, but there are others that hold leaves all year long. The snow st

• I wholeheartedly sympathize with North America struggles and would like to ask for return of those proper winters back in Europe.

• German Rail is as surprised as US Energy that Winter is cold and there might be snow.

• This will get progressively worse for the next 100 years or so. Has been reliably predicted for something like 40 years now and anybody surprised is just ignorant.

• It will definitely keep you home warm in a Blizzard

• These little outages make news whist a Carrington would take out power in many parts of the country for years.

  We could have upgraded our power grid to handle it for the cost of the Ukraine War to date, but that would be actual infrastructure spending, and not graft for the blowing-shit-up companies.

  "Representative Democracy" is a total scam.

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    Are you implying that there's something wrong with people spending their college fund on fireworks for the 4th July? How unpatriotic of you!

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    Carrington wouldn't have the same effect as in ye olden days, communication and monitoring is far better.

    It's not an EMP, it's just a tiny bit of DC power in an AC system... ohh it can generate enough voltage to jump a telegraph key, so can my piezo lighter. A black start would still be a huge disruption, but only truly retarded operators would let the transformers blow.

• Headline kind make it look like the USA is in some sort of AGW defying big freeze.

  Here in the Northeast where I am, (PA) we really had no winter to speak of. The few cold snaps we got weren't long enough to freeze the ground, a lot of mid 50's to low 60's, and even a 75 degree day tossed in.