Sunday Sunsets, Frozen Pipes and...

This is a sunset at San Clemente Beach here in Southern California.  It's been so horribly cold up here in the mountains I needed something that reminded me of warmer weather to look at here. Our  high temperatures for the past few days have been in the low to medium single digits, Fahrenheit. 

My poor husband has been outside all day in the sub-freezing temperature battling frozen pipes.  The raccoons had pulled off a little piece of pipe insulation from a tiny bit of pipe that exits the water heater closet and goes right back into the house.  Just that little exposed bit was enough to cause havoc. And, while he was doing this, he discovered hairline cracks in several pipes so he had to replace those pipes lest they burst.  Thank goodness he's done now: He's been at it since 4 this morning and it's now 5 p.m. 

Tonight our low will be well below zero (Fahrenheit) and there will be strong winds of up to 60 mph. I can't even begin to imagine what the low temperature will be once the wind chill is factored in.  My feral colony of cats have warm shelters to sleep in, but I'm very worried about all the other stray cats and dogs in the rest of these mountains.  I hope they can all find warm, safe, comfortable places to shelter.

Oh yes, I almost forgot...we also had a little earthquake today!  It was only a 3.7 on the Richter Scale, a teeny tiny one by California standards.  We didn't feel it, I heard about it on the news.  May the future ones all be that small...