It's soup for breakfast today!

[cathead]

Good grief, the thermometer this morning is approaching -40 for which I gave it no designation because
40 below is 40 below in both Farenheit and Centigrade. Anyhow, it is indeed cold here in northern Minnesota.
I can keep the shop at 50 degrees F but the fluorescent lighting takes a bit to come on. The cold is far reaching I
see as most of the USA is in the clutches of winter.

Today, after thinking of what is for I breakfast, I decided to move away from the usual. Today I'm having potato
soup for breakfast and a pot of coffee. Then it is on to the wood fired boiler which is hungry too these days.
I burn a lot of poplar wood which is on the lower end of the totem pole as far as heating is concerned. Several
hundred pounds of wood or maybe more go into the boiler every day. I heat the house, the shop, and also my
domestic hot water with wood. After today, there is a general warming trend on the way and it will be well appreciated.

I have been studying welding tables and am considering building one. Presently, I work on the shop floor which
is anything but optimum. If I venture out, I may head for the scrap yard in the heat of the day and see is there
is some iron for that project. Also, the weather allowed me to read up on TIG welding and I have been educating
myself on the basics of 2T and 4T and all the other things that go along with that. I came to the conclusion that
using 4T, you NEED a table, a flat table, a sturdy table, and big enough for whatever one is working on.

At any rate, stay warm out in machining land and have a good day.


I took this photo out of my kitchen window this morning. I see the thermometer needs cleaning but you get the picture.
The cold I can take, it's the wind chill that gets your attention!

 

[savarin]

A deep freeze only goes down to -18C and a good commercial freezer is only around -28C max, that means you can pop into your freezer to warm up

 

[pdentrem]

Cold! We almost never see that cold. The Great Lakes have a moderating effect on the temps but once they are frozen, the snow stops but it gets colder.
Pierre

 

[Martin W]

When I burn Poplar in my boiler, I call it Gopher wood. You put 2 pieces in and go for more... Lol
Cheers
Martin

 

[Jubil]

Stay warm and safe. I can’t imagine what -40* is like. It’s 16* F here this morning and 3” of fine powdery snow. Two uncommon happenings in this part of the world.
Supposed to be in single digits tonight, I don’t remember single digits but a couple times in my life.

Chuck

 

[b4autodark]

You must be a little farther north than we are, I'm just east of Fergus Falls and have -30 right now. We are lucky enough to be burning Ironwood and Red Oak that has been seasoned for 6 years now.

Fargo news station says 38 above zero for a high next Monday, hang in there!

 

[SLK001]

Sorry, I don't believe any of this! It's 75º this morning, climbing to 85º later in the day. Shorts and T-shirt weather!

 

[b4autodark]

You can have your 85 weather, I haven't swatted a bug all week.

 

[macardoso]

Ouch. I'm headed up to the middle of Alaska for work in a few weeks. Our guy there emails us the temps. Been in the -20 to -40*F range for months now, but the killer is the sustained 40mph winds. Some of the work is outdoors too! I'm not super thrilled about this assignment...

 

[RJSakowski]

We only hit -13ºF last night. Fortunately for us, the weather people got it wrong again. Most of the schools are closed today, probably because of predicted -40º to -50º wind chills. Kids today are soft.

When I was in high school, I had to stand out in the -20 for as long as fifteen minutes waiting for the bus. We didn't even knoiw about wind chill back then. I learned how to swear waiting on that corner. After that first year, I elected to ride in with my dad when he went to work. He would let me off about a mile from the school and I would run the mile to keep from freezing. Teenage pride kept me from wearing a cap and one wouldn't think of wearing long johns when you had gym class. Needless to say, the fronts of my legs were chilled to the point where they were totally numb but the backs were fine.