Thursday, December 29, 2022

The winter storm

 Some thoughts on what's going on in parts of the country.

In the late 1970s and early 80s I lived in such a part of the country, near a big lake.  There was no fuel injection; our cars had carburetors. By then we had advanced to the point that the choke was electric and "set" itself when it was cold with a slight press of the pedal.  There was no electric fuel pump; it was driven by the engine.  You got in the car, pumped the pedal once or twice so the accelerator pump would squirt the raw gas in the carb bowl into the intake, pressed it slightly one last time and released to make sure the choke was set and turned the key.  If you did it right for the conditions and your battery was in decent shape the car would start, often firing on two or three cylinders originally and running extremely rough for the first few seconds until the rest of them lit up.  If you got it wrong and flooded it you were screwed as there was insufficient battery power to keep cranking for very long, and if you left a discharged battery out in that cold it was very likely to freeze and split.  Thus if the car failed to start you better either be able to get an immediate jump or have the tools to remove said battery and bring it inside so it wouldn't freeze!

I didn't have a garage; that was a luxury and I had no money.  I was a young man.  I had to park outside.  After said car started you cleared the snow off (frequently a foot deep) and then you had to wait until the engine warmed up enough that you had cabin heat.  Not for yourself; you had on a winter parka and long underwear under your pants but rather for the defroster because if you didn't wait the first time you exhaled your breath would freeze on the INSIDE of the windshield and you couldn't see a damned thing.

Phones were connected with wires and the closest one required a quarter to be deposited in the slot and was probably 10 or more miles away once you got in said car and started driving.  There was a zero chance of you reaching it if you got out in 0F conditions and attempted to hike that; you were dead if you tried that stunt.  If you went off the road and into the piled-high snow, often by February 10' in height on both sides of said road, that had been previously removed from said road by twin-augur snowthrowers on the front of a dump truck filled with sand you'd be lucky if someone realized that hole was made by a car and the car is still in there; there was no way to call for help so your only hope was another vehicle that noticed as if wherever you were going called in your lack of arrival figuring out where you balled it up in those conditions was not going to be easy.  You were quite carful to not have that happen because if it did they'd probably find your dead body in April.  The mailboxes on said roads were hung on tall cantilevered chain rigs that would swing out of the way when hit because otherwise the first time said snow removal device came by it would destroy the mailbox.

You never went anywhere without good (ski-style) gloves in the winter months either on your hands or in the car, and you never went anywhere in the winter months without adequate clothing which included a thick knit hat for your head, gloves and emergency supplies in the vehicle, including plenty of blankets or other means of keeping warm (I was a broke young man so a pile of blankets it was; I didn't have money for a cold-rated sleeping bag/bivvy sack), a source of minor heat (e.g. a candle and means of lighting it), and a small tin or other similar thing plus a set of road flares so IF you were off the road you could lay a trail TO YOU from the road and increase the odds someone driving by would see it, especially at night -- assuming you could walk between the points, that is, which was by no means reasonably assured as there were no such things as airbags either so if you crashed odds were high you were BADLY hurt.  Why the candle and plenty of matches?  The candle wasn't for heat for you; it was to melt snow in said tin so you could drink it without killing yourself via hypothermia, and the means of keeping warm without energy was so if you had a mechanical breakdown and could not use the engine for heat, or had an extended problem and ran out of gas you didn't die.

He goes on.  Do go read the whole thing.

I would note that several of the people who died up near Buffalo died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  That means that they were running their car to keep the heat on, but they didn't clear the snow away from their tailpipe and the exhaust fumes came right back into the car.

Good times make soft men.

Both the wife and I have emergency supplies in our vehicles.  We grew up in colder climates.  We understood that snow and cold could kill you dead, and you had better be prepared.  Every winter you went through a list of things that needed to happen if you got stuck, and one of those things was that you got out of your car and dug out your tailpipe, so that if you needed to run the car you weren't sucking on your own exhaust fumes.  Apparently that little tidbit of information hasn't made it down to later generations.

I don't have any answers.  All I have is my own knowledge, and my attempts to pass it along.  But I'm willing to bet that many of those people died because of their lack of preparation and their lack of knowledge.

2 comments:

p2 said...

I grew up like that and spent my first few years on my own in the late 70’s in cold weather/snow country. Sound advice. There’s cold weather gear & supplies in my rig year round; I’ve been stuck in the snow in July up here. When it’s 75 miles between towns on the few roads we have & cell service doesn’t exist, you kinda learn no one’s coming to save you.

pigpen51 said...

I live in Michigan, on the west side of the state. I am 62, and have spent half of my life in a small town, and then moved closer to work, to the bigger town that I worked for over 35 years at the same job. So I drove over 40 years one way for about 16 years.
I am close to Lake Michigan, so get a lot of snow, we call Lake Effect. The trip for 40 miles was often made at 3 am, to get to work by 4 am, to run a furnace in the steel making factory that I worked at. At that time, the snowplows often had not been out yet. So I would be plowing snow with my vehicle.
I never drove a pickup, or a 4 wheel drive of any kind. The few times that the roads were just not passable I just didn't make it to work. It was cheaper than buying an expensive vehicle for just a month or so of bad weather.
But I too kept my cars in good condition, back then with good plugs, points and plug wires. Snow tires in winter, and always have kept the appropriate supplies such as cold weather gear, energy bars and a case of water, road flares, etc. I also used to keep a spare V belt, and I still keep some tools, just in case.
This snow storm we just had, was certainly one of the worst ones in the last number of years. Probably since 1978, the year I graduated from high school, started working at that shop, and driving the 40 miles. I only missed work 1 time in that so called storm of the century. This is a new century, so I guess this is the storm of the new century. Today it hit 50 degrees, and snow continues to melt like crazy, and with the temps said to remain above freezing for the rest of the week, plus rain over the next day or so, this snow will be a memory by the coming week.
That is the wonderful thing about Michigan. Like they say, if you don't like the weather, just wait a minute, it will change.