comment: >
  
  Misleading title.  No one is without bitter cold...
context: I'm in Maine and a tad over 248,000 are still without power. Didn't help we had excessive winds which prevented linesmen from doing their jobs. Thankfully I never lost power but 2 miles down the road it is a different story.
  A lot of people in Maine have generators and wood stoves but a lot of others do not and right now it is 20 degrees and the high for today is 21 with a low of 12 and we won't get above freezing till Thursday so for some, this could become a life threating situation. >
  
  
  A lot of people in Maine have generators and wood stoves but a lot of others do not and right now
  
  It's probably going to become as "normal" as a fridge or HVAC in housing for some areas in the future. Climate's changing, and expected temperatures/extremes are changing. Not much else someone can really do when you effectively know you're going to get weather like this and the infrastructure isn't going to handle it anytime soon. I know many people who already had their own large generator/solar installed to their houses due to that, many people know it's going to be something they want and don't want to wait until everyone's rushing to have theirs installed. >
  
  Wood stoves have always been common in Maine, might see more generators but the issue with those is cost. This has been a problem in Maine as long as I’ve been alive. Heavily wooded landscape does not bode well when there are high winds or lots of snow. >
  
  Yeah southeast Idaho doesn’t seem to have the same issues with widespread outages, but a big part of that is that the snake River plain doesn’t have a ton of trees >
  
  Free idea for the people in charge: dig the power wires underground >
  
  They do, but it’s a lot of extra work to secure them properly. Lots of concrete and need special (more expensive) wire. Then something eventually happens, but they have no way to track down exactly where the issue is. It ends up being cheaper to run new poles and lines over the underground ones than to fix. >
  
  Sure, I quess it's more expensive to do it, until you count all the death and destruction you get with the cheap option. >
  
  Not really. Say it would cost a trillion dollars to bury them all. Put that money towards new hospitals and you would save factors more people. >
  
  Until the hospitals run out of power... What kind of comparison is that? >
  
  Hospitals have generators. Nearly every one of them. >
  
  I wonder what the toll will be on the livestock. >
  
  Damn I hadn't considered the effect it would have on livestock. I hope they're okay for both their sake and the sake of not having meat prices soar. >
  
  Kind of depends on the livestock, cattle can survive these colds easily so long as farmer throw out extra hay and straw, they produce a ton of heat when they eat and they just huddle up when it’s this cold. 
  Worst I remember seeming on the farm was their ears freezing off. And that was during a week of -40. >
  
  Sometimes their snot can freeze over their nose and mouths and they suffocate. Farmers I know usually have to go out there once or twice and wipe their faces >
  
  I wonder what the toll will be on the homeless >
  
  Atlanta has opened a total of 3 warming shelters. We have countless churches in this state. I’m curious as to how many of them have opened their gymnasiums or community centers or chapels to allow the homeless a warm place to sleep for the night and how many are giving their annual Christmas show priority. 
  Tis’ the season. >
  
  Buffalo NY here expect higher number when people can get outside to confirm deaths. >
  
  deep woods of northern Wisconsin here, and last few hours it warmed up nearly twenty degrees...to -30°f
  how y'all doin? >
  
  Minnesota here. Our power didn't even flicker. I'm going in to work today. >
  
  Born and raised in Minnesota. It used to take like three feet of snow to get school closed for ONE DAY. Or the time we had the -70 windchill and the governor closed the schools. >
  
  I think the ability to have distance learning makes it an easier case to close schools. After 2 busses flipped over in Waconia, it seems like a safer choice if they're prepared for it. >
  
  the day after tomorrow >
  
  This is when they think - dam, shoulda got some of those pizza buckets >
  
  In Atlanta. We have a ton of places with pipes bursting because the sprinkler systems aren't built to withstand this sort of cold, so people are just getting their apartments destroyed all over. >
  
  Good time to get into the woodstove business. >
  
  I live in Seattle and I am so glad we managed to get our brush with freezing rain completed before the actual holiday began. My sympathy to everybody who is in the middle of it or has it looming over them. >
  
  In SE Wisconsin, my power stayed on (stray outages across the state), but the real fear was a natural gas shortage last night. Supply dropped something like 30% due to a pipeline problem and our energy company asked us all to conserve and turn the heat down. On a day where it didn't get above 0°F, the thought of a cascading, regional heat failure was terrifying. >
  
  Where is the incentive to move yourself away from at least having a second source of what could well turn out to be life-saving heat?   
  fireplaces / bunkered fuel oil / bottled LPG etc seem to me to be an unqualified requirement for a US home....... >
  
  I do not have a fireplace, a heating oil tank, or a propane heater for my house.  And thank goodness for that, because these things would all be wasted on me.   My power hasn't gone out for longer than 15 minutes in the 7 years I have lived here.  
  If my power went out right now, I would just pull out my old kerosene heater and go get some kerosene.  And crack a window. >
  
  For what it’s worth - don’t expect anyone to have kerosene in stock if that happens. Normally sold out the day before a big freeze. >
  
  I guess in that case I would find a hotel or Air BnB. >
  
  So everyone mocks Texas but then it happens to them and they’re silent. >
  
  I remember vividly how people on here were saying we deserved it because if you live in Texas, you must be a conservative asshole. >
  
  No one in Texas deserved that. And I say that as a registered Democrat and a diehard liberal voter. No one deserved to freeze to death, ever. Except maybe the corrupt politicians that convinced your states voters to shoot themselves in the foot regarding their own power grid, then tried to blame fucking windmills for it. >
  
  Oh I get it, and I believe you 100%. But I have to say that is just proof people don't vote enough. If the GOP gerrymandered the map, it's because they were voted into positions where they could. If no one challenged them, it's because the people who appointed relevant judges were voted into place. 
  American (and I want to make clear I am not targeting you as an individual here) has a problem with thinking only one vote matters, and it's for one guy every four years in november. Every position from the lowest city clerk to US senator matters, and we need to vote consistently for everything, not just put a ballot in for president when we're worried about a hotbutton item that we'll forget a week later. >
  
  100%. We always say if the valley voted, Texas would be the most valuable swing state. Hopefully that changes with these younger voters coming of age but as of right now most people only vote in presidential elections. >
  
  Still better off than most of Ukraine. >
  
  Well yea. It's a snow storm, not a genocidal invasion of a stronger neighboring country that wants to wipe us out because it's blitzkrieg plan didn't work.