Ice and Pipes

Ok, readers.

So ya’ll know how there was that dang arctic freeze in Texas? Well, it affected Louisiana too. I guess Louisiana could be considered part of Texas these days (excluding NOLA and Baton Rouge).

The first day the temps dropped was just….normal. We get cold temps here. Maybe not as cold as ye ol’ northern states, but seeing 30 degrees in January and February is not unheard of. But the snow…that’s another story.

We got this snow that I had never seen before. It was powdery. I couldn’t make it into a snow ball. I could dust it off of my clothes. The snow we normally get makes me change because I get soaked to the bone in freezing water. And the streets….they were covered. I had never seen the snow cover the streets before. And some of the bayous were frozen thick! It was glorious. Isla and I played in it like we were in some magical wonderland.

The birds loved it too. They were all over the place.

All of us were looking forward to the next day. More powdery snow? BRING IT! But it wasn’t powder we got.

Ice coated everything. The snow froze. No more powder. Just crunchy white stuff. It was beautiful, but it was not good. It reminded me of that scene from the Day After Tomorrow where the temps get so low everything just freezes. The trees were creaking in the wind. It was silent aside from that.

We had our sinks dripping but we still lost water. We lost water for days. The worst part was when we got a trickle back but being told we couldn’t use it unless we boiled it. Our house made it out of the rolling blackouts, so at least we could boil the water. It wasn’t until Saturday as the temp finally went back up when we got out water back. It was low pressure, but we managed to shower. Unfortunately, the thawing lead to one of our pipes bursting. It was above the ground, thank goodness, so we had it fixed by that night, but we had to go another night without water.

Sunday was the first green day in a week and I could finally wash the clothes and get the dishes clean! It was warm enough to wear only one jacket! It was great. Monday was even better, we didn’t even need a jacket. Spring is in the air? But Tuesday I noticed why our backyard still hadn’t dried up from all the snow/ice melting. We had a busted pipe in our shed. It was spewing pretty badly. Daniel turned our water off and fix it. Our shed is useless now….probably along with everything it. I haven’t looked in it yet because I couldn’t get across the small pond in our backyard. We kept the water off until late last night.

I knew bursting pipes would be a problem for people, but I didn’t expect it to be a probably we would face. We’re glad it was all above ground pipes, but it was still a headache. I always wanted snow like that, but you know what, winter can stay up north.

Things we learned?

• Well, we now know how to fix and cap a pipe.

• We now know that dry cold is much more tolerable than wet cold. I wasn’t freezing my butt off when I was outside and that was super nice.