Third BLIZZARD of the year

[beau159]

Seriously Mother Nature. Enough is enough!

We had a historic 4-day blizzard in North Dakota in mid/late April.
Then another record-setting blizzard in middle of November. Didn’t last as long (about 2 days), but set records for amount of snowfall in a 24-hour period.
And now we just wrapped up another 4 day blizzard.

This one was a doozy. We lost power on the 15th. Our brand new expensive automatic Generac generator wasn’t working. My horses heated water fountain froze solid without a power source. A good chunk of my fence is buried under the snow. It’s not been very much fun.

We finally got a nice shelter put up this summer so thank goodness for that. (The April blizzard was he!! with only a tiny 2-sided windbreak for them). My water fountain thawed itself out without anything damaged when the power came back on about 24 hours later.

This morning, I spent my time putting up a temporary fence above my snow-buried one. I don’t think my horses would go for an adventure but I’m not going to take the risk.

Friday morning with no power and a big drift in front of the shelter

Backside of the drift - normally I feed a round bale but what they had left was buried in a foot or two of snow, that I shoveled out later.

Full view as husband is going out with the Bobcat to clear some of the snow away. He had to first go through a very wide 4-foot drift to even get to the horses gate.

And my redneck temporary fence this morning. My T-posts are 6 foot T-posts. I’m standing on the worst of it - cannot see the top of the T-posts anymore. It had a “feels like” temperature of -14*F when I did this. Thank goodness there was very little wind. It’s really annoying to work with fencing in thick warm mittens!

[cutter99]

I do not envy you!

We are getting ready for snow and single digit temperatures here in Tennessee later this week. My husband and I are lucky as we are Damn Yankee transplants who are used to dealing with snow and ice. What will make it a little tougher is we are carrying for neighbor’s horses about a mile and a half from our farm while they go to visit family for Christmas, so we have to be able to get to them to care for them.

We are putting our extra round bales for the cattle, and actually picked up a couple more feeders yesterday. We spent today making sure our four wheelers are all in good running order, fueling four wheelers and the tractor, as well as fueling our trucks.

We have a spring that is constant flow, so it does not freeze, that horses and cattle both have access to, as well as Ritchie waters that should not freeze as long as the horses and cattle are hitting them frequently. Our Ritchies are actually hooked up to public water, so even without power they will still work, but a permanent generator is on our project list.

My husband is concerned about the cold stressing our heat pump that heats the house, and I have a feeling we’ll headed to Lowe’s for a couple back up space heaters.

We have been here for 8 years, but never expected this kind of cold down here. Thankfully we still have all the appropriate clothing

[ThreeWishes]

I know it’s probably hellaciously hard but damn how beautiful. And your horse trailer is the stuff my dreams are made of! Sending you all my hot humid Florida vibes for a quick thaw out. Stay warm !

[jvanrens]

I got a chill just looking at your pictures, we’ve been lucky in the lack of snow department this year. I hope you have a thaw soon!

[NaturallyHappy]

Since you are in ND, this is probably a stupid question. Does your generator have the “cold start” feature on it? I have 2 (because of how my farm is wired) and neither came w the cold start feature. The person who installed them never mentioned it. After I’d had them several years, the man who services them suggested I add the “ cold start” gizmo. Your pictures look overwhelming!

[Six_Pack_of_Ponies]

Shiver at the thought. Snow is beautiful until there is too much of it… What a gorgeous landscape though. And yes, I agree you appear to have quite the dreamy horse trailer (as someone above mentioned). I’m in western MD haven’t seen snow yet this season – but cold temps are lurking (11 degrees as the high next weekend). Hoping the forecasters are incorrect. Also hoping Mother Nature is done showering you & yours with snow. Warm wishes to you!

[carman_liz]

Michigan moved to east TN here!!! Any snow we get hopefully will be gone quick! 50s and rain Thurs during the day, low of 25 that night, then 31 for the high friday and 8 at night, barely above single digits Saturday at all!! I am more concerned with ice and the power lines. Do you have a generator or a fireplace?

[Lunabear1988]

Ugh this looks awful. I hope you get warmer temperatures soon!!

[B_and_B]

Ugh! Those drifts! I hate the wind.
I am very happy, we finally managed to finish extending and dividing our run in shed, so the old pony mare has Her Space, and the draft boys have their space. We had the added expense of having to cut down a massive 150 year old Sugar Maple that was dropping limbs constantly. With that gone and the shed extended (infilling a wind gap), things are looking a lot cozier than last year when I was forced to feed all hay out in the full wind because no one would venture under the maple unless forced… And, lug unheated water buckets to the pony multiple times a day, since the boys were not letting her near the water tank.
Now, I know that for 16 hours a day, the boys have their hay (and a quarter acre of space), she has her run, they All have heated water. And all is good. And I think the horses are starting to believe it too!

[clanter]

I just checked the weather for the North Dakota ranch we have been buying horses from tomorrow’s 4F is the highest for the next seven days, after Monday the temps do not get above minis 5F until Next Sunday the 25th. Thursday looks like a day when it not a good idea to be out with it being minus 17F with 30 to 35mph winds

Here is us picking up a horse there between blizzards in March of 2019

[beau159]

@ThreeWishes

I know it’s probably hellaciously hard but damn how beautiful. And your horse trailer is the stuff my dreams are made of!

Yes, the snow can be pretty, but I really don’t need to look at this much of it, LOL.

Trailer is my dreams too. I just got it in May, custom ordered the way I want it. Absolutely love love it.

@jvanrens

I hope you have a thaw soon!

No thaw until spring!!! I hate it when it gets warm enough during the winter to start melting stuff, because it inevitably gets cold again and turns whatever it melted into ICE.

@NaturallyHappy

Since you are in ND, this is probably a stupid question. Does your generator have the “cold start” feature on it? I have 2 (because of how my farm is wired) and neither came w the cold start feature. The person who installed them never mentioned it. After I’d had them several years, the man who services them suggested I add the “ cold start” gizmo. Your pictures look overwhelming!

Not sure but I would assume so. The problem is that it would run, but then sputter and die about 10 seconds into it. My poor husband was literally standing outside in a blizzard for a good 2 hours on Thursday night, trying to get the blasted thing to run. We had figured out the air filter was the problem. For some reason, it was getting enough snow blown onto it to make it damp, and that’s what would prevent the generator to continue running after it started.

We’re on the service list for Generac (behind about 20 people after this ordeal). I’ve done some Googling research myself in the meantime and this seems to be a known problem. WTH??? A blizzard around here is exactly when we are going to lose power and if the darn thing can’t keep going with wind blowing, well, we have a problem. I highly doubt Generac is going to come up with anything. We’ve found a few ideas on google to help lessen the amount of snow getting in but it might not solve it completely. Had we known, we would have problably built the house with the generator inside the garage and the exhaust vented outside as that probably would have worked much much better.

But the generator has it’s own enclosure from Generac???

[beau159]

@Amberley

When I lived in the cold north we used that thick clear plastic you see on coolers or cow sheds hung in 3-4 wide strips from the top of the openings on the field shelters. The horses can push through it easily and it lets the light in but it keeps the snow out and really keeps the temps up in the shelter. One mare never came out unless made to.

I don’t know how that would fare around here. I’ve never seen anyone have that up.
50 mph gusts for 2-3 days during a blizzard tends to rip apart most things like that. I don’t know of any plastic that would sustain that.

@clanter

I just checked the weather for the North Dakota ranch we have been buying horses from tomorrow’s 4F is the highest for the next seven days, after Monday the temps do not get above minis 5F until Next Sunday the 25th. Thursday looks like a day when it not a good idea to be out with it being minus 17F with 30 to 35mph winds

Yup, gonna be cold for at least the next 7 days. Worst will be around Thursday, with an air temp high of -14F during the day, close to -30F air temp at night. And wind chill will make it feel colder.

[NaturallyHappy]

Hmmm…. that is interesting. I’ve had mine since 2004 and that has not been a problem, but I don’t get the weather you do. They are sheltered a bit behind a tool shed. My neighbor has one - she hates the look so built a privacy fence around it. Could that help?

[OnAMission]

I keep seeing how ND interestates have been shut down and working to be cleared… I’ve lived where the weather acts like this and it’s not something I miss. Looks like you got that shelter set really well for the wind though? Unless you cleared it out the wind went around it. I’d leave that drift, it will help be more of a shelter through the winter. We’ve had our fenced buried too, our property was like yours only more drifting/more elevation, the horses didn’t even try to get to the fences but I can see putting up a little something to keep marking the fenceline. This weather is rough but it makes tough horses, they usually take it in stride!

[ReSomething]

Bluey had some photos of those in use at her ranch. We had something similar on the outside doors where I worked as well. Very thick, tough material.

[beau159]

@NaturallyHappy

Hmmm…. that is interesting. I’ve had mine since 2004 and that has not been a problem, but I don’t get the weather you do. They are sheltered a bit behind a tool shed. My neighbor has one - she hates the look so built a privacy fence around it. Could that help?

Ours looks nice in that the Generac Cover it came with is fairly sleek. We might try a pexiglass fix we came across but worst case scenario, we might try to build some sort of little box around it. The annoying part is that we have a new house too and we’ve already done landscaping around it, so that will all have to get changed. Or to somehow make it look nice.

Just really, really mad at Generac for not better informing home owners of things you could do for best performance in nasty weather conditions. We’d have done it differently.

We’ll also plan to have several spare filters on hand. At least then, you could put in a dry one, when the first one gets too wet. We got about 90 minutes of run time on Friday morning (after my husband dried the air filter in his pickup, with the heat blowing on it) before it died again.

@OnAMission

Looks like you got that shelter set really well for the wind though? Unless you cleared it out the wind went around it. I’d leave that drift, it will help be more of a shelter through the winter.

We built the shelter a certain direction on purposes. Blizzards winds can vary but we orientated it for the most common wind direction, which is what this storm did. I wasn’t sure if it would backfill into the shelter (that happened to people during the April blizzard, but the wind literally blew from every direction during the course of the 4 day blizzard).

No, drift got plowed away. It’s in the way other wise. If the wind is from the south, then they stand on the backside of it.

@Amberley

The snow piles up on the outside of them and so they stop whipping around at some point. And they hold up well to wind in my experience but you might ask locally or your extension agent.

They way you describe this, it makes me invision trapping animals inside, LOL.

@Amberley

They are usually called livestock strip curtains. Saves your hay from blowing or getting covered in dirty snow too.

I know the strips you are talking about but I have never personally seen them anywhere in my area. I just did some quick Googling and most of the ones I found are only rated to about -15F. Air temp is going to be -25F this week at night, and that’s not factoring in windchill. So I would imagine they could even crack just from animals going in and out, much less when the wind blows. I don’t see any way they would work up here.

The snow isn’t dirty so not worried about that.
And normally, I have a HayChix net on my round bale which does excellent for waste.

Curious - may I ask what region you live in?

[cutter99]

@carman_liz

Michigan moved to east TN here!!! Any snow we get hopefully will be gone quick! 50s and rain Thurs during the day, low of 25 that night, then 31 for the high friday and 8 at night, barely above single digits Saturday at all!! I am more concerned with ice and the power lines. Do you have a generator or a fireplace?

We are in Middle TN, and our temperatures are supposed to be in the single digits overnight headed into the weekend and not make it of the 20s during the day.

We have a gas fireplace that we have never hooked up, and we have a portable generator which can run the essentials.

But we also have a secret weapon. We live in a one lane holler with only a few neighbors, but we have the right neighbors. Two are linemen, so we are never out of power long.

Ice is scarier than snow in these parts. Along with the fact there is not much in the way of snow equipment for the roads, the natives tend to drive pretty poorly in it. We are set up to be able to stay put for weeks at a time, which we learned after our first winter here. We got 6 inches of snow, and the schools were closed for 2 straight weeks. We never saw a plow the entire time.

[Bluey]

@Amberley

When I lived in the cold north we used that thick clear plastic you see on coolers or cow sheds hung in 3-4 wide strips from the top of the openings on the field shelters. The horses can push through it easily and it lets the light in but it keeps the snow out and really keeps the temps up in the shelter. One mare never came out unless made to.

@ReSomething

Bluey had some photos of those in use at her ranch. We had something similar on the outside doors where I worked as well. Very thick, tough material.

Yep, pictures before and after the strips.
Our problem was the wrap around winds with the blizzard create a vortex.
The strips avoided that and snow kept blowing over the roof and on:

[endlessclimb]

Since it’s too late to move the generator inside, can you instead have an intake pipe that makes it draw air from the garage? (or other indoor structure). Exhaust can vent like normal.

I don’t envy you. My SO mentions NoDak and SoDak as places he wants to move when he retires, and the answer to that from me is a HARD no - I can barely tolerate Chicago winters, let alone the craziness you get!

[carman_liz]

Thank goodness for good neighbors!!! Here’s hoping your power stays on and everything goes smoothly this week and weekend for you!