Occasionally in ATX!

Yeah, even in Austin TX it does happen occasionally!

You folks from more northern climes are probably asking, “*what* happens? Oh, you mean you find snow exciting?!.”

Not surprisingly, at 34F, I didn’t have too many qualms about turning on the heat pump for this! It did suck down the battery a bit, though. I forgot to use the app to pre-warm the cabin, unfortunately.

I’m surprised how much I like the steering-wheel warmer! The seat warmer was good too, but I turned it off shortly, whereas I kept that steering-warmer on the whole time!

A week or so ago, I mentioned that I found that the heat pump seems to suck up more power than the air conditioner. In this particular case though, it’s not at all surprising, after I realized something: We mammals are warm-blooded! Warming 34F up to room temperature is a 40F temperature difference, whereas cooling to my usual 80F setting in the summer is only a 10-25F temperature delta!

Curious historical note: the Celsius scale we know today really is better called “centigrade,” as we used to call it, because it’s not what Anders Celsius invented. Celsius‘ temperature scale did have a 100-degree difference freezing to boiling, but it went the other way: He called boiling 0, and freezing 100! His reasoning most likely is that Swedes see a whole lot more sub-freezing temperatures in day-to-day life than above-boiling temperatures, so Celsius probably wanted to avoid that pesky minus sign.

The P.Prime gave me two messages I hadn’t seen before:

I noticed that DRCC didn’t seem to be working, and then, sure enough, it told me to “clean the radar sensor.” I was on the freeway, and it was cold out, so I wasn’t about to get out to dust off the Toyota badge! Traditional non-radar cruise control was good enough.

Then a little later, it said that the forward-view camera was out; “please clean the windshield.” Indeed it didn’t seem to be complaining about lane-departure close calls like usual. When I got home, although the rest of the windshield was clear, the area inside the camera housing was indeed fogged up, presumably because the defogger couldn’t blow into that hosing. Anybody have any tips for avoiding fogging up inside the camera housing?


iPhone ? Pro

 

And not North Texas either (snow is not so uncommon in Dallas — perhaps 2-3 times a year, vs. once every 2-3 years here).


iPhone ? Pro

 

Interested in hearing you folks comments on the wacky stuff I reported, like having to clean off the radar antenna, or how to keep the camera part of the windshield from fogging up.


iPhone ? Pro