Ouch, Marylyn,
That does sound cold. It's lucky that you have lived in colder areas and at least have some idea as to what to do to prepare for the cold - and you have blankets available. I was just checking the weather.com site and noticed that their main page has a link for power outages. That would be my #1 fear in the cold.
I looked at the map of current US temps. Your area is currently much colder than mine. You are in the lower part of that cold arctic blast, not the purple area that is horrendously cold but the grey/white area that represents the next level of cold. Thankfully, we aren't in any part of that arctic blast area. At the moment it is 50F here and still climbing. Inside, I've had my suit jacket off most of the day.
I checked our 10-day projected weather. Unless things change, we aren't predicted to get that super cold blast - thank heavens and I sure hope our luck holds out. Maybe you should come for a visit until things warm up at home. : )
Except for Fri, Sat, & Sun, our projected weather is in the 50's by day and the 40's by night. That sounds downright comfortable compared to what I'm seeing and hearing about elsewhere. At that rate, we may be warmer than parts of Florida (hint, hint, Terese). Our weather for Fri, Sat, & Sun (the worst of the 10 day period) is projected to be in the 40's by day and drop to the 30's and even 20's at night. Sun is the worst of it with a projected low of 22F. That is really extreme for us, something I frankly haven't seen here since I've been taking note of these things. I will have to see that to believe it, but just in case, I think I'll try to dig out what cold weather gear I can find.
So far our projected weather doesn't look all that bad. It looks like we will just be on the outskirts of the actual artic air mass that is effecting much of the country, but as it is coming down hard through the mid west, you appear to be in the path, at least of the secondary part of it. I have my fingers crossed that our luck here holds out and we manage to stay on the fringes of that thing.
Hoping your weather won't get as bad as predicted. Better wrap the pipes and leave the water dripping just in case though. You probably know all of the tricks, but when I lived in a slightly colder area we used to put a 150 watt or greater light bulb in the pump house (well water) on really icy nights to keep the pump and related pipes from freezing. You might be able to use a version of that trick for pipes in exposed places if necessary. Since my house is built 'on the slab' (no crawl space for wind to get to pipes), I don't have to worry too much about pipes, but I do have a small section of narrow pipe that runs above ground for the back-flow assembly for the automatic sprinkler system, to let inspectors test that it doesn't allow water and other things to flow back into the system. The narrow pipe runs up about 2ft into the air to allow the testers to reach it, and consequently, unlike the pipes encased in the ground and the house, that pipe can freeze - and has done so. I keep it encased in foam insulation which seems to do the trick, but in summer the testers lift part of the foam to get to the pipe to do their test. When finished, they always neglect to put the foam back down over the pipe the way they found it. If I forget to check behind them, that section of pipe freezes on the nights when the temps drop into the upper 20's, and I wake up with no water. Argh! Just to be safe, all this week I've been leaving the water dripping since I don't think to check the pipe insulation until after dark when it's too late and cold to mess around out there.
Oh, now that I think of it, I need to get out there and wrap the outside faucets with insulation to be sure they don't freeze and burst. Better to take preventive measures than to have to deal with the mess of frozen pipes. Good thing we had this conversation.
Take care - and try to stay warm.
