How Cold Is It Today?

It's so cold today, I saw something I haven't seen before:

A Democrat Politician with his hands in his own pockets.

Time To Sing The Cold Song

With the temperature now at -1 with a wind chill of -25 at the moment  -- and still dropping, it is time for the cold song:

It's Cold.  Cold.  Cold, Cold, Cold.

Colder than the frost on a champagne glass.

Colder than the hair on a polar bears a$$.

Colder than the nipple on a witches' t!t.

It's Colder than a pile of penguin sh*t.

Dress appropriately for the weather, and stay warm out there today folks. 

Cold Range

Went to the range today for the first time in awhile and met up with Tosh. First shooting outing of 2023.

It was right at Zero degrees Celsius, 32 Fahrenheit, pretty much winds calm and full overcast so the cold kinda crept up on us. Some snow on the ground overnight, but the roads were pretty much clear which was nice.

On the upside it meant the suppressor cans cooled off right quick.

Tosh had his first suppressor, a Griffin Armament RECCE5, that he had on his AR15.  Took a year for it to get out of suppressor jail.

It worked great.

I also had a couple new guns out, one of which will get its own post.

The other is new to me but a Surplus Police Sig P320 Carry Pro pistol.

It looked like it hadn't been shot or carried much, but the top cover over the optics channel was gummed up pretty hard and one of the allen key screws holding it in place had been blundered - so badly it had to be laser cut to remove.

I then after freeing the optics cover added a Leupold Delta Point Pro, a Streamlight TLR-1HL, and my Hannukah present  -  A Wilson Combat carry frame.  

The Carry Pro frame is kinda chonky.  The WC frame, by comparison, fits my hand wonderfully and is slimmed down, has a higher relief cut behind the trigger and has excellent grippy-ness with excellent texture on the front, back and sides of the grip.

Changing the frames was a snap, as all you need to do is remove the fire control unit that is the serialized part, and put it into the new frame. The new frame looks and feels great.

 I then zeroed the sight,  tucked it into a PHLster Floodlight holster, pulled the sweatshirt over it, and put it on the clock.

Lack of practice for quite a few months definitely showed.

After couple warm-up runs, I managed to get the 3&2 drill down to 3 seconds, then I scored a best run of 2.48 seconds, which I was rather happy about after all this time away from the range.  Cold hands didn't help much either.

Bill drills didn't break the 3 second mark, most were around 3.5 or more and that clearly was from a lack of practice.  7 yard single shots were around 1.67 with some higher.

Overall, I seem to shoot it better than my Glocks, but we will see. The pistol had zero failures and shot really nicely.

The Delta Point Pro has a lovely-sized window and acquiring the dot quickly is very easy. The pistol is definitely a keeper, and the 21-round magazines I bought for it make for 3 Bill drills or 4 3&2 drills before you need to reload.

We then shot some rifles at 100 yards, and then called it a day.  Rather cold by the end of it, so after we cleaned up, we headed out to grab some burgers and libations to mark the end of a successful range trip.

Not a bad way to spend a Saturday morning.

Ouch You know it's Been Cold When...

You look at your car outside temperature gauge this morning:

And you consider that -7F isn't all that bad compared to the last couple days. Sheesh.

So How Cold Is It?

Windchill is now 35 degrees below zero.

So cold that when I took Jett for his night time walk, the bitter wind brought tears to my eyes, which froze immediately onto my eyelids.

So cold that Jett basically said to heck with it and cut his walk real short all on his own.

So cold you can throw a pan of boiling water up into the air and none of it hits the ground as water (yes did that again today for fun).

So cold that Pontiac airport is reporting a density altitude of -4,177 feet. Normal density altitude is positive 1,000 feet. That would make for some awesome airplane performance -- assuming you don't freeze to death during the pre-flight.

Just A Touch Cold Out There

Schools are cancelled, a state of emergency has been declared by the Governor, and the Post Man's appointed rounds have been suspended in this state.

Now at -8F with a wind chill making it feel like its -31F right now, it is a bit nippy.

The Driveway of Doom™ got me last night as I was plowing off snow that had accumulated on it. First fall of the season and ys the ground was rather cold, as was the air last night for that matter.

Today calls for hot chocolate and the kids are using their time off school well and helping to heat the house by baking some fresh cookies.

Of Temps And Tires

With the temperature dropping 40 degrees in a day over the weekend it was time to check the tire pressure.

Sure enough, the tires had all dropped to about 26 psi cold from their normal 30 psi. That's quite a drop.

So I went to fill them only to find our tire air compressor was broken and would compress no more. So, I ordered a EPAuto Air Compressor Pump from Amazon and it arrived yesterday.

It's both a lot smaller than my previous compressor and is if anything quicker, and the digital readout is both easy to read and to set for your tire pressure. It worked quite well and takes up very little space.

A cold air swing will likely reduce your tire pressure and it's a good idea to check them and make sure they're up to spec.

Some Grey Days

There used to be a yellow ball in the sky. Haven't seen it at all this week.

I can certainly understand how people can get seasonal affective disorder. This basically sucks - grey and then the dark of night, rinse and repeat with the addition of blowing snow and some cold temperatures the past couple days. Basically yuck combined with getting up in the dark and leaving work in the dark makes people a little cranky.

Low cloud cover also means it has been solid IFR every time I've been scheduled to fly, so no lessons recently.

On the upside, the snowblower has done yeoman service, clearing the 1-2 inches of snow per day/night that have been falling every day this week with aplomb. Since it's not packing snow this machine eats it up and clears the Driveway of Doom™ quite nicely. I'm liking this little coal and nuclear powered beastie.

The downside is that without the sun to heat things up and low temperatures, the driveway is not as clean as I'd like it to be as ice patches will not melt away, but it will do. The driveway looks better than our street, which is basically snow-covered with some tire tracks through the snow.

I'm sure the sun will come back on its own at some point and flying weather will return so I can keep learning.

The Guns Of February

Sunny and 20 degrees, about as good a February weather forecast for outdoor shooting that you can get in Michigan.

And so, to the range I did go.

I went with my friend Manuel to the outdoor range where I'm a member.

Manuel had just purchased a Tavor with an 18" barrel with a Trijicon ACOG mounted on it, and he needed to take it out and try it alongside mine, and get it zeroed in.

We shot the Tavors side by side at 25 yards and hit our targets nicely.

I think that makes us Tavorishes.

Both Tavors, as expected, functioned perfectly.

At close range, the Aimpoint Pro gave a faster sight picture, especially when we practiced snap shots, but the ACOG shines at longer range with its magnification. We each appreciated each other's Tavor and the different optics on them.

After shooting the Tavors, we pulled out our carry pistols. My S&W M&P 40c and his Glock 27.

I also pulled out my new-to-me but clearly used 40 M&P full size.

This was a police trade in with night sights, and the pistol arrived with a lot of slide wear and it was pretty gunked up. It was so gunked up that the magazine release would not drop the magazine when pressed but it only moved down a bit. The gunk seemed to have been coffee and doughnuts stuck in the internals. Some judicious cleaning and oiling and it is as good as new and the mag drops freely, the grip is no longer sticky and the suspiciously-looking-like-coffee stain on the metal part of the takedown tool is now gone.

After shooting the compact, the full size was much easier to handle, even though the full size is not that much bigger than the compact, it fits the hand just a tad better and is more controllable.

A little bit more grip goes a long way, and I could clear the plate rack a lot faster, not to mention make consistent head-shots out to 25 yards on USPSA targets. I may just follow Tam's lead and just start carrying a full size M&P. We'll have to try it out and see how it fits, or I may end up rotating it with the compact depending on wardrobe requirements.

Manuel's Glock 27 had a Crimson Trace laser grip on it, which unfortunately in all the bright sunlight and snow was not useful as the dot was completely washed out. The laser still is a valuable tool for use at night and in dark areas, but don't expect it to perform in bright light with reflective snow for a fore- and backdrop.

His Glock also had an interesting custom safety installed:

The safety was a bit problematic - if you weren't careful while firing you could unintentionally activate it, so you had to take care with your grip.

The Glock 27 was decent, especially how he has it setup with the 13 round magazines from the Glock 23 with magazine sleeves on them, but I'm finding I'm shooting better with the M&P.

We also did some weak-hand only shooting, which showed that yes, I need to do more weak hand shooting.

Then we headed out to the 100 yard range, breaking a path though thigh-deep snow to get there.

We shot the Tavors again and shot my 300 Blackout AR15.

The Tavors had no problem ringing the steel plates at 100 yards, as did the 300 Blackout AR15.

That's another 120 rounds through my Tavor with no stoppages or issues to date.

The hours passed and our hands were starting to get pretty cold by the time we were done shooting. So we cleaned up, packed up, and headed home.

A darn good range trip.

Global Warming, My Frostbite!

Here's the latest in Michigan Global Warming news:

Bitter, cold temperatures settle in across Michigan

Bitter cold temps cover 79% of Great Lakes in ice

Yeah, that Global Warming theory is working out real well.

Reality is dousing it with a bucket of cold snow.

Clicking on that link takes you to post where you'll graphically see that even as the IMF Chief tries to scaremonger the ever-coming threat of Global Warming, none of 73 of the global warming climate models match the actual observed temperature. None of them. All of them are instead way too high predicting warming that is not happening.

The IMF, IPCC, Obama and assorted other progressives want to throw our economy and indeed the industrialized world's economy into an even greater tailspin based on such shoddy "science". Or instead of calling it shoddy science, should we say instead it's based on shoddy progressive policy preferences pretending to be science?

Go check out the Hockey Schtick blog. It's worth your while as you huddle to keep warm this winter under all this global warming.

But it's A Dry Cold.....

Said no one, ever.

Got up this morning and quickly walked the dog as he didn't like the cold temperature and wind we're having this morning. 

With the wind chill providing a felt temperature of  -35 F, as promised we did the boiling water experiment again today:

As you can see, it worked.

So with schools closed yet again, I'll be working from home.  Thanks to technology, pretty much everything I can do from there I can do from my toasty warm home.

Stay warm out there.

How cold? So cold that Natasha's car battery is cold stone dead and jumping it does nothing.

So How Cold Is It?

With the wind chill, it's currently -40 F. School was cancelled, and will be cancelled tomorrow.

It finally stopped snowing, but we got more than 12 inches of snow and it blew into soem pretty impressive drifts and cleaning the driveway took quite some time.

Now the cold has come to take the snowfall's place. Taking the dog for a walk in thigh deep snow drifts in -40 doth sucketh.

Indeed, it's so cold that we took a pot full of boiling water, threw it up in the air, and it evaporated into mist and not even a drop hit the ground.

Not believing it, we did it a second time with the same result.

I had read about that happening in Alaska, but never thought it would work in Michigan. The kids were suitably awed. I'll try it again tomorrow morning and see if we can get it on video.

That's cold all right.