In honor of the frigid Arctic temperatures that are now dipping down through most of Canada and the US, I thought I would relate my “adventures” dealing with a cold snap we experienced in the Robson Valley about this time in January of 1991. Since living through so many winters in the Robson Valley and having to deal with so many problems the frigid temperature cause, I automatically feel uneasy and get nervous upon hearing a forecast of a cold spell. Here is the story:
We had just suffered through two weeks of continuous cold temperatures ranging between -20F (-29C) and -33F (-36C). It was pretty brutal. It was so cold that someone in Prince George had reported that they saw a lawyer walking down the sidewalk with his hands in his own pockets.
The cold snap started out badly for me. After I had gotten home on that first day when it started to go down to -20F, I noticed that the cold water tap in the bathroom was running rather sluggishly and was on the verge of freezing up. (The bathroom water was a weak link in our water system and was always the first thing to freeze up.) I figured I had better do something to prevent it, so I crawled down into our dark, gloomy, cobweb-draped, crawlspace under the house and plugged in an electric space heater, so that warm air could blow over the waterline leading to the tap.
I couldn’t think of anything else to do; I had the block heater in the car plugged in, I had armful of wood brought in and ready for the wood stove, the electric baseboard heaters in the house were turned up and humming, so I went to bed dreading the thought of how cold it would be the next morning, but confident that everything would be okay.
I was wrong.
The next morning when I forced myself out of bed to check the thermometer, I was depressed to discover it was -33F outside. I got dressed as quickly as possible, then opened up the front of the wood stove to get that burning hotter. I fixed a lunch for work, then decided that before I went out to the barn to feed the goats, I should check the car. I thought I had better start the car to allow it to warm up before heading off to work.
I got in the car, turned the key and heard one of the most pitiful sounds that can befall a commuter on a cold morning: ERRRrrrr.r..r…r, then silence.
The engine wouldn’t turn over. The block heater had been plugged in to keep the engine warm, so the only problem I could think of was that for some reason, electricity wasn’t getting to the block heater.
I went back inside the house and checked the electrical service box and discovered that the breaker leading to the car had been thrown. I then realized that when I had plugged in the space heater under the house the night before, it had overloaded the electrical circuit which was on the same circuit as the car and it had thrown the circuit breaker.
The story continues tomorrow.
You can see my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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