Heavy Snow and Frigid Weather at the QTH

Well the snow has finally stopped, but the temperatures have been sitting -8 to -10 F  all day.  The temperatures are supposed to fall as low as -17 F tonight.  The storm that passed through yesterday and last night dumped a little over 12 inches of snow at my QTH.  The first 8 inches of snow was very wet and heavy.  The snow built up on the trees and brought a quite a few limbs down.

Limb that Brought Down Doublet (the broken wire can be seen to the left of the limb)

Unfortunately, one of the limbs brought down my 80M doublet.  This snow is going to have to melt off before I can make repairs to the doublet because I need to get up on my roof to retrieve the center insulator.  This is only the second time the doublet has come down in 5 years–both times it was hit by falling tree limbs!

During the worst part of the snow storm my log periodic accumulated close to an inch of very wet snow on the elements and boom.  The 55′ element tips were drooping almost 4 feet at the worst point.  Fortunately, as the wind picked up yesterday afternoon, most of the snow was blown off the elements.  The Orion rotor is not having any problem moving the 10-30LP8 and XM-240.  I have been trying to rotate that beam every few hours just to keep things from getting frozen.

I hope to work some of you during the NAQP CW contest this weekend.  Of course I won’t being working anyone on 80M this weekend!

73,

Fred, KC9QQ