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Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

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Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#381

Post by ddingus »

exhilaration wrote: post #34
arberx wrote: post #6

How do electric vechicles hold up in something like this?

A stranded ICE vehicle will exhaust its gas tank in 8 hours, max. You can turn it on an off to stretch it out but I wonder if you'll just burn more gas that way. Google (and Quora) suggests that a Tesla will last 36-72 hours, "or less" if it's very cold. I think EVs win in this case, assuming a full tank versus a full charge. Regardless if you're in a place where this could happen you should have a box of chemical ha…

Rough metrics say idling can consume anywhere from 1/3 of a gallon to a gallon per hour of idle time.

Taking the worst case, and why not because it's cold, and people may be inclined to do more than idle their engine, means roughly an hour per gallon of fuel.

Some ICE cars may only idle for a few hours, others a lot more, depending on what's in the tank.

Best move is to pulse the engine. Start up, idle until the vehicle is really warm, shut down and repeat every other hour or so, depending on the cold and what people have to stay warm with.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#382

Post by manquer »

darkengine wrote: post #371
manquer wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A satellite phone seems a simpler solution which is more reliable than Ham radio?

Satellite phone subscriptions aren't cheap, but chucking a Baofeng in the car pre-programmed with some repeaters along your route (CHIRP can do this) is free.

With starlink and eventual Tesla tie ups , sat phones should become much cheaper in the future.

Also many cars do come with sat system packages that are only emergency use and cheaper in this mode of operation.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#384

Post by kaesar14 »

rayiner wrote: post #352
kaesar14 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Nobody in northern Virginia wants to live in Hong Kong, and even if they did that ship sailed long ago. Also, the fertility rate in Hong Kong is less than half the replacement rate. They’re like the Asgard—an impressive civilization, full of marvels, but without a future.

Ok, go to like, every other city in China, Japan, South Korea, or most of the cities of Western Europe. Take your pick.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#385

Post by obmelvin »

jcims wrote: post #284
emptybottle wrote: post #73

A good reminder to keep some warm blankets/coats/gloves/hats in your trunk, along with some non-perishable snacks and a first-aid kit & flashlight. Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in. Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathro…

>Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathroom breaks. This also helps limit the amount of water that can condense on the walls of the gas tank and wind up freezing in the pump or fuel line. It’s possible modern cars have some countermeasures for this because it has been years since I’ve seen it happen, but an additional (potential) b…

A little extra reason to refuel your car sooner rather than later is that the fuel pump will be stressed more as the tank approaches empty.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#386

Post by asdff »

IdoRA wrote: post #363
asdff wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of weather pattern is not unusual at all. This is how winter is for the most part in places that have winter. I'd go out to clear snow off my car and find that my car would regularly be coated in an inch thick layer of ice from rain-turned-ice before the storm progressed to snow like a dozen times a month in the winter when I lived in the east. VDOT could just close the freeway section in advance of the sto…

I’ve lived here for decades, so I am very familiar with the weather here—I am of the opinion that it was an unusual volume of rain leading up to the snowfall, rain all night before transitioning to heavy snowfall early AM where I am. Closing the freeway feels like a good idea, but then you’d have ~130,000 cars/day traveling on surface streets? The Rappahannock doesn’t allow for many crossings other than 95.

What happens is you close the freeway, it makes the news that its a bad storm and the freeway is closed, you call your boss (or if they are any good they'd call you) and say you along with everyone else is not going in, your kids aren't going to school, and the truckers sleep in their trucks at the gas station for the night. Then by the next day, or whenever the storm is over, roadworks will have had enough time to clear it off and salt it. That's how its done where it snows in other states.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#387

Post by fy20 »

thrashh wrote: post #350
binaryblitz wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are great to have. I will say that 3100mAh is pretty low and wouldn't even fully charge most smartphones. 20kmAh batteries can be purchased for less than $100, and 10k-15k mAh for less than $50. A good idea to have just in case. :)

Someone already mentioned this but I want to clarify that mAh alone is not a full measure of capacity. OP mentioned his mAh rating in 12 V but you’re comparing it to Ah ratings in 5 V. OP’s battery should be able to charge a full smartphone fine. Also, most of those 10-20k battery packs won’t be able to jump start your car because they have greater capacity but cannot provide power quickly. There are high capacity ba…

I had a cheap one 5 years ago that was able to jump start a car. The instructions said to leave it connected to the battery for 30 seconds before trying to start it, so I guess it's more a portable battery charger than a jump starter. For sure if you disconnected the 12V battery and only connected this it would not work.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#388

Post by rootusrootus »

Animats wrote: post #29

14 inches of snow at Fredricksburg, VA. All at once. The annual average is 13 inches. This seems to be an unexpected consequence of climate change. Slower moving storms, with huge amounts of rain or snow in a short period.

I'm firmly on the side of science with regards to climate change, and I don't think this type of commentary helps convince anyone. When there's a heatwave, it's climate change. A cold snap, also climate change. Tornado? Climate change. We would rightly ridicule a climate change denier if they equated weather events with climate, we shouldn't do it either.

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#389

Post by teakettle42 »

emptybottle wrote: post #73

A good reminder to keep some warm blankets/coats/gloves/hats in your trunk, along with some non-perishable snacks and a first-aid kit & flashlight. Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in. Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathro…

> Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in.

Emergency drinking water that comes in foil pouches seems to survive freezing; I’m not sure if it’s a requirement of the ISO standard they have to conform to for use on survival craft (I don’t want to pay $250 for the ISO standard just to find out).

I keep an emergency supply of these in my car through Colorado winter and summer, without any issues:

https://www.datrex.com/product/datrex-emergency-water-ration...

Re: Motorists have been stranded on a major interstate in Virginia since last night

#390

Post by ddingus »

emptybottle wrote: post #73

A good reminder to keep some warm blankets/coats/gloves/hats in your trunk, along with some non-perishable snacks and a first-aid kit & flashlight. Water is harder to store in the winter since it will freeze and burst containers if full, but snow can be melted given a container to put it in. Also a good to refuel often. I try treat 1/2 a tank as empty and stop accordingly. On longer trips it lines up well with bathro…

Yes. We had a family incident a number of years back. Stuck on a mountain pass in the cold for the better part of a day. We've also seen a breakdown in the desert, and that one was a couple days.

We always refuel before entering a risky part of travel. Never count on getting there. Make sure. And in a scenario like this that refuel could provide a days worth of heat, depending. No matter what, it's a lot more heat than driving at reduced capacity would have yielded.

Rough metric is you get 1 hour of engine idle per gallon. Some cars do better than that. And you can pulse it, warm vehicle up, make sure everything gets charged, fluids able to flow, etc... and then shut down for 1/2 hour or so in order to stretch the resource.

We carry:

-2 gallons of water

-Car road trouble kit, flairs, compressor, various tools, tape, things...

-First Aid

-Some food

And this is usually our road munchies, pet food, etc...

-Weather related stuff

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