Greetings and welcome!
The snow last week didn’t amount to much around here. I think that I probably captured the peak of it with the white ground and car pictures.
I did see a picture on Facebook from M75 up in the UP that showed a 5″ blanket from the lake effect snow, but they said that it was slushy and you would go right to the bottom of it. We haven’t had any snow since, but there is a chance next week that a storm or two could bring a few flakes.
I checked the ENSO report a few minutes ago and so far so good. The outlook continues to predict ENSO neutral conditi0ns into spring, though there are a few signs of a little warming. Right now we are just a little on the cool side of zero, and it looks like we will end up just a little on the warm side of neutral. I kind of expected a weak El Nino this year, we have had two LaNina winters in a row. We are still 60 days out from really knowing, but so far so good.
I have been seeing some fuel issues lately and I am still planning an article on it. One fuel issue is the snowmobile in the shed with the hole in the piston. That one died of bad gas, either stale or low octane from the pump. Only a talk with the owner will establish which one that it is.
More recently I have been getting a check engine light in the car. Using the scan tool it showed that an oxygen sensor was putting up a trouble code. I cleared the code and it came back. The car was really running bad. I talked to someone very knowledgeable about such things and he pointed to bad gas.
I ran the tank to the bottom and refilled with top tier gas, and all is better now. The car has its original pep and zoom, and I haven’t had a check engine light since, and it has been 200 miles. At that point I changed gas suppliers, and can only imagine what it would have done to a snowmobile.
I have been researching and I am planning a more extensive article on fuel one of these days. For right now that takeaway is to start the season with fresh gas from a top tier gas station, and get rid of last year’s gas in the tank, don’t just dilute it. The price of having an engine failure is too high to make saving a little money worth the effort.
Well the alarm just went off, so I am off to get ready for work. I will be back in a few days to follow up when I have a little more time.
Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB