comment: >
  
  Biden should tweet “otw to Cancun for Christmas! Lol jk”
context: Brutal. Not awful in Toronto but our friends 90min south in Buffalo seem to be getting pounded. Hopefully the power stays up as it is fucking freezing! >
  
  Or us unlucky punks that had the power go out have wood stoves. That's what's keeping me warm right now and if the power is still out for days then it will be keeping me alive.
  Seriously if you live in a cold place you should invest in an emergency wood stove >
  
  Or a back up generator >
  
  Preferably both, but I would say that a stove fireplace is much more reliable and you don't need gas at hand to use it, though I suppose you need wood at hand >
  
  You can also cook on it! >
  
  You can cook on a gas generator if you lay the food near the exhaust and don’t mind cancer >
  
  Carcinogens! My favorite spice >
  
  In Buffalo, NY we’re currently dealing with 5 foot snow drifts and 70 mph gusts with a -15°F windchill. People are stuck in their cars and are running out of gas. Emergency vehicles are stuck and are mostly unavailable. It’s pretty bad. >
  
  I cannot understand why anyone was on the road. If businesses forced their workers to be out they should be held criminally liable >
  
  
  If businesses forced their workers to be out they should be held criminally liable
  
  Sorry, you seem to have mistaken the US for a sane country where it's considered bad to sacrifice your worker's lives for profit. >
  
  State:                       Out:
  Maine                    252,688
  New Hampshire    110,486
  New York              94,723
  Pennsylvania       87,231
  Virginia                75,759
  Massachusetts   70,000
  North Carolina    64,758
  Maryland             62,287
  Connecticut        54,246
  Vermont              42,159
  Ohio                    37,475
  Kentucky            35,916
  Texas                  33,522
  Tennessee         29,408
  Michigan            23,222
  New Jersey       22,732
  Washington       19,589
  Louisiana           17,888
  West Virginia     14,319
  Alaska                11,511
  Top 20 states   1,159,919
  Total nationwide 1,228,882 >
  
  Btw Maine only has like 1.3 million people living in it. So for us to be at the top is insane >
  
  My wife and I are retiring to Maine next year.  Any idea why so many out?  Are there more above ground wires due to the rocky soil, more remote wires, or was it the state just got hit harder? >
  
  I'm in rural Alaska but I"lll take a shot (I have relatives in northern Maine). Maine, like us, has huge rural swaths. Like no joke rural. These are probably the areas with outages due to the sheer amount of trees falling on the lines, aging infrastructure and winds from the ocean. If your moving there and buying a home if it doesn't have a toyostove, a wood stove or a full house generator it I'd call it a deal breaker and keep looking >
  
  Everytime I see above-ground wires strewn between fucking wooden posts sticking out of the ground, I'm reminded how poor our infrastructure is in the US. We need to have started investing in buried line decades ago. Edison himself would recognize the technology and that should concern us all. 
  My rural county got cut off for two weeks about three winters ago. It was traced back to the fact that power for over 150,000 people could be traced to one. fucking. line. coming over a hill and a blown-over tree took it. Ridiculous.
  Instead of proper upgrades that utility company (PG&E here in California) chooses to pay out stock dividends to investors. Their negligence has resulted in death and destruction in the form of everything from fire their equipment has started to leveling entire blocks of cities like the infamous San Bruno gas line explosion. We need to get our priorities straight and stop giving these companies a pass. >
  
  A book was written not long ago about this. California Burning. Catherine Blunt. Absolute greed led to the campfires and the unreliable infrastructure of California utilities. >
  
  -11 here in central NY. I just know my energy bill is going to be really high in January 😢. >
  
  This month my freezer timer and thermal switch died, causing the freezer to turn into an oven for the day. (defrost coil ran wild)
  So I fix that and my drier does the same thing. It dried clothes until the thermal switch either killed the heating element, or the element just died. I realized the drier was still running the next day...
  So my electric bill was looking bad.
  Now my electric bill is going to be super bad. I'm guessing it will be over $1,000 judging by past winter bills. >
  
  Based on my usage so far this year compared to last year, and because a new utility bought our gas company and is raising rates astronomically. I am expecting my first $800+ gas bill this month.
  Granted we have some gas fireplaces we probably use too much because it’s Christmas season. But something is not right about this. >
  
  Hey that's me! All's I want is to be able to make some warm food and watch the wire, but cold fries and reddit are all I have
  Also I'm so far north I'm almost in Canada, so it's pretty chilly out
  E: ok have the power again! >
  
  Portal, North Dakota? >
  
  Cook county, Minnesota. Whole county has been down for 7 hours >
  
  Rent a room at Thunder Bay, will probably be cheaper than the heat bill you’ll get. Modern problems require modern solutions. >
  
  My heat is electric supplemented by wood stove. Also don't have a passport on hand. Also I couldn't even get there as I need gas and don't have any cash, when the county loses power you can't use credit cards in town. Annnndddd downtown is closed right now because a roof came off a business and they don't want people down there because of all the wind and debris >
  
  February is gonna be interesting >
  
  Could be really warm. No one knows with these bizarre weather patterns. >
  
  Reeeeeeaaaaallllllyyyyyy thankful that my dad bought and installed an automatic generator for our house. That and our wood burner has us fortunately warm >
  
  The most populous city in Wisconsin is being threatened with a natural gas outage in this cold, because of a pipeline problem and increased demand on what would otherwise be backups. Not an electric outage -  a gas outage, which a generator can’t get you out of. It hasn’t happened yet but they asked everyone to turn their heat to 62 to try to prevent it. >
  
  Makes sense. This storm happened so quickly. Bundle up with layers of clothing and ride it out. If they live in such a cold spot and aren't prepared, that's on them. It's not a surprise that our northern temps get below freezing often in the winter. >
  
  
  This storm happened so quickly
  
  You would have thought Texas last year would have been a wakeup call for the country. Guess not... >
  
  My concern is everyone saying this happened quickly.
  I was hearing about a "Siberian arctic blast" over a week ago, and knew how cold it would be for days beforehand. >
  
  It's been an average of -15 here for the past few days, everytime my furnace isn't running I get nervous and am checking the thermostat, couldn't imagine if the power went out >
  
  If my power goes out, we literally have to pack into the car. I have enough gas money to keep us warm until the weather improves but my son's autistic and completely intellectually disabled... so it will be hours in a car with a screaming kid and two dogs lol. Little guy can make your ears ring from across the room, so I'm going to call that an absolute last resort. >
  
  Came home to power but frozen pipes in Ohio. Maybe I’ll try to shower in the morning? >
  
  That is insane that you even have exterior pipes in Ohio, tbh. >
  
  I don’t know anyone here in Ohio that has exterior pipes. Problem is our indoor pipes freeze just as easily if they’re against an outside wall and not well-insulated. >
  
  Damn, that is frustrating! Spray foam insulation was a life saver at our old place, but we still had the occasional issue with our dishwasher since that line ran right next to our garage. >
  
  Heyo. South-eastern Michigan reporting in. Where I'm at, it's -2F outside, with windchill at -30F. And we had a power skip for about 5 minutes an hour ago. For five minutes. Long enough to seriously reconsider where I'm living. Scary...! >
  
  I think it’s absolutely wild I’ve left SE Michigan to spend Christmas in Traverse City and it’s actually warmer here than there. Snow is a different story, but even so. >
  
  Think about all the wildlife that has frozen to death in the last 48hrs. >
  
  eh, most animals are great at survival and can handle adverse conditions. Hundreds of millions of years of natural selection does magic to building survival instincts. >
  
  When the snowpocalypse happened we had dead dear and birds everywhere, In fact I had dead birds on my front porch. >
  
  Not saying it doesn’t happen, but it is a natural process. Mother Nature can be a cruel beast and survival of the fittest isn’t always glamorous. >
  
  Absolutely. If the south gets colder, then we have plenty of tundra animals that will love it there. >
  
  Mississippi has power outages due to rolling blackouts   Not the same thing, but definitely not used to the cold >
  
  52F in Phoenix. I had to wear a light jacket today, so I get it, I'm so tired of winter already. >
  
  40 here in Florida, so we had to get out an extra blanket. 
  I did stock up on a couple extra cords of wood, just in case. >
  
  40 degrees?  
  Lucky ass.  It's-30 degrees with the wind chill up in the Blue Ridge Mountains (Southwest Virginia). >
  
  I was honestly considering spending Xmas in Asheville before all of this. Honestly glad I skipped it >
  
  Not as bad as I would have thought.