Storm Outage

I'm back online. My little city had a hell of a storm. The weatherman said that the winds were 80 mph (128 km/h) and 70,000 people lost electricity. I was one of those 70,000 without electric power. No TV, no computer, no radio, no room lights, and after 12 hours, no hot water. The refrigerator wouldn't run. The electric stove/oven and the microwave oven wouldn't run. 

When night came Nuria and I used candles, and I had a battery-powered fluorescent-tube lamp. When we went to bed I turned off the fluorescent lamp and let the candles light the bedroom. It was a very soft light, and eventually it burned so low that I snuffed out the candles.

(Photo left) A fallen tree blocks a road around the corner from my house. You can see the electric wires tangled in it. That's the mess that cut off electricity to my house and to a number of other houses. I lost power at about 4 PM on the 22nd and power was restored at about 5 PM on the 23rd. That was a very long 25 hours! Sandwiches and trips to a nearby fast-food restaurant kept the situation tolerable.

This photo (right) shows the top third of an electric utility pole. In the US, treated wooden poles are commonly used for both telephone and electric power. When the tree fell on the wires, the top of the pole snapped off and landed in the street. It's not an uncommon sight after a strong storm, especially a hurricane. 

I would imagine sights like these were scattered around the city. I'm glad the outage lasted only a day. I've had outages after a hurricane that lasted three days. And I'm glad this event happened in June. When it happens in mid-winter it's called an ice storm. There's not much worse than waking up in a cold house with no electricity/no heat with the outside temperature at 18°F. It's happened to me. I've blogged about it.