When I was little we never lost power - this is unreal. We have evn had our water stopped because of the storm - never heard of that years ago.

Happens all the time to us. In our water district the towers (which gives you water pressure) are filled by electric motors. So quess what. When you lose power you have just a few hours before you will lose water pressure too.

JP, same here, and we lose power a lot. I think mostly to tree limbs. Even in the summer time power goes out. We complain but nothing happens. CF:)

We hit 6-below last night.

Watching the news they said that 20 below was our area's record some 30 years ago- but that can't be right. I remember as a kid we lived in a ramshackle farm house w/ no insulation and often it got down to 25-30 below then. According to our thermometer, anyway!

We had natural gas but w/ no insulation, so when it's that cold we heated the outdoors more than the indoors w/ all the heat that escaped thru cracks, etc.

I remember always about January we would hafta drag our mattresses downstairs and set them up on the dining room floor near the old black wood stove just to keep from freezing!

my furnace shuts off long enough to turn right back on - it's so dang cold - I've been shoveling my azz off - and I don't think my body will ever warm up again - I swear my body temperature has to be just above freezing!
and those winds whipping through here are making it even worse -
it's so bad that the mercury in my thermometer even left town! it's not there anymore!