When it's fifty degrees below zero Fahrenheit, it's not uncommon for water pipes to freeze.  The best solution is prevention.  Water pipes need to be buried below the frost line.  If a water pipe crosses a road, most likely the water will freeze.  City water prevents this from happening by circulating the water as long as freezing is a possibility.

Our water freezes at least once every winter.  We have a well-built home, but the water pipes still freeze.  Why?  Even though the pipe is at least ten feet under the ground, horizontally there is about a two-foot stretch of pipe that runs along a concrete block wall.  It is this section that we believe freezes, usually after it warms up after a long cold spell.

For our first home, we built a utilidoor around the pipe from the house to the well.  We never had to rent a pipe thawer once in the nine years we lived there.  When we had a contractor build our present house, we tried to convince him to use the same design.  However, he had years of experience building homes in Alaska.  He assured us that heat tape and sprayed foam insulation around the pipes should keep the water from freezing.  We hadn't lived in our new home a month before the water froze.

Eventually we dug up the line from the house to the well and built a pump house over it.  The whole water line is either buried the ten feet or inside heated space, all except that two-feet section between the well house and the garage.

Our first clue that the water is frozen:  the pump runs and runs and doesn't shut off.  We unplug the pump to keep it from burning up.  Then we go down to the rental store and rent a pipe thawer.  It looks like a welder's buzz box with two very long jumper cables hooked to it. You clip one end of the cable to each end of the exposed pipe and turn it on.  Depending on how long it was frozen, you will have water again in two to twenty-four hours.  Even once the water pipe has thawed out, it takes a little fiddling to get the air out of the line since our main living area is over the top of the basement level where the incoming pipes and pump are.  So we've never had our pipes break during these yearly freeze and thawing operations.

Every year when the water freezes, we promise, "Next summer we are digging up the rest of the line and fixing the problem.  However, summer comes, the water doesn't freeze, and it's easy to forget it ever gets that cold.

This year the water has frozen twice.  Next summer for sure...

Since we can count on the water freezing or the well running dry at least once a year, I am prepared.  I fill up jugs with water, a teaspoon or two of bleach and a drop of soap.  Used bleach and liquid laundry soap containers work well for this, especially the two-gallon size with the spigot on the side.  However, these containers are storing water for washing hands and flushing toilets.  Drinking water needs special preparation.  I keep a couple of gallons of fresh drinking water in the refrigerator at all times, a few gallons of purchased drinking water, and a case or two of bottled water.

If you want to store tap water, I recommend you follow these guidelines for water storage presented by the Utah State University Extension. 

What is the mercali scale?

American seismologists Harry Wood and Frank Neumann developed the modified scale in 1931.  The scale is named for Italian priest and geologist, Giuseppe Mercalli, who died in 1914.

The Mercalli scale ranges from I to XII, I for an earthquake that is only detected by seismographs; XII for one causing total destruction of all buildings.  The scale is not based on a mathematical formula.  Instead each degree is a subjective analysis of observed effects.

The twelve steps of the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale is available from the Glossary of Earthquake Terminology.

The 1964 Good Friday Great Alaska Earthquake is the second strongest magnitude earthquake of the 20th century.  Ten of the 15 Largest Earthquakes in the United States have been in Alaska.

The Richter scale was developed by Charles Richter in 1935.  It is based on a logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs.

The Richter scale measures magnitude.  The Mercalli scale measures intensity.  The Richter scale has been supplanted by other magnitude scales that use newer technology and global communications.