More cold

[altivo]

It's 2F right now, even though the forecast said tonight's low would be 4F. I'll bet it gets below zero again.

Car wouldn't start this morning after being parked for 15 hours in the subzero chill. First time that has happened to me since about 1972. Started easily enough with a jump this afternoon, drove it to town. Came back, did chores, had supper, started again with no problem and went to Audubon meeting. Started once more after meeting and drove home, no problem. Incredibly, I suspect the problem was that I left the GPS turned on and plugged into the power outlet. That drain, small as it was, combined with the intense cold this morning, kept the battery from turning the engine over. We'll see tomorrow morning.

It was cold enough today that when I poured well water from a bucket (probably about 50F temperature) a dense cloud of "steam" filled the air around it. There's fog forming tonight where light winds play across snow-covered fields.

Time to go to bed where it is warm.

Comments

[hrrunka]

Winter's far from over, I guess, and car batteries don't seem to like it cold. I had to replace my car's (six year old) battery after its three weeks of idleness while I was away, during which the temperatures dropped to -18C (which is rather colder than we've had in quite a while). I was able to get charge back into it so that the car was usable, but it tended to drop voltage just enough (from the drain of the car alarm, I expect) that it wouldn't reliably start the car if it had been idle for more than a couple of days.

[altivo]

Fortunately no problems this morning, even though the temperature was only 2F. I think the difficulty yesterday really was due to having left the GPS plugged in overnight. In warm weather that doesn't matter, but with the extra cranking power needed on a really cold engine, it was just enough weakness to cause a failure.