You would cry too if it happened to you

So I wake up this morning at 5AM to the sound of my garbage cans being whipped into the chain-link fence on the side of my house, and winds so strong that the micro-drafts coming through the windows are powerful enough to shake the drapes.

The power flickers on and off repeatedly for the next few minutes. I get up and unplug all the electronic goodies, and turn off the 3 battery backups throughout the house.

I look out the bedroom window and see electricity arcing from the electrical poles. Against the night sky, it’s possible to see that some of the lines are down, the wooden arms broken in twain.

My girlfriend and I look outside and see police cars and neighbors, so we throw our coats on over our pajamas and go outside. Two fire trucks are positioned about 5 or 6 houses down from us, and a third zips by.

From our backyard, we can see the flames rising as one of our neighbor’s garages goes up in flames.

A firefighter knocks on our door and tells us not to go into our backyards, the chainlink fences are electrified due to the downed wires. They string caution tape between our house and the houses 3 doors down on either side to keep people out of the backyards.

We manage to go back to sleep despite the excitement, and finally wake up at 9:20am. I put on the coffeemaker and make a phone call. It’s up to the ‘4’ on the pot and the power cuts off, this time for good. At 10:00am, cellular service via AT&T goes down. Not like, “oh, a tower lost power,” it goes down regionally. Zero signal for miles and miles. Calling a number doesn’t go to voicemail, it goes to a “this number is disconnected or no longer in service” message.

It’s 7pm, the house is 60F, and the DTE truck is on our street. We’re giving it another 90 minutes or so before we grab our overnight bags and head to relatives’ houses.

God bless battery backups and laptops, though. At least I have a few minutes of Internet to enable me to gripe online!

Good luck to you, it’s a coin toss whether you’ll win the “first to have power again” lottery, but here in Louisville we had 300,000 without power for a week after a freak windstorm. Thankfully it was in warm weather, so I’d go ahead and make for the relatives, were I you.

H.

You’re heading to relatives homes when it’s still 60F in your house? I thought mid-westerners were hardy folk . . .

:-)

Yeah really. That’s when I’m firing up the fireplace and breaking out the sleeping bags.

We’ve got water seeping in through the basement floor again, want to trade? :)

(it’s not as bad as last time, as we made some improvements, but apparently the flash-snowmelt + rain combination was way worse than the heavy rainstorm earlier this year)

The winds managed to rip our mailbox off its post and throw it into our neighbor’s yard, so yeah, it was pretty crazy last night.

During the New England ice storm, my brother had a massive oak fall on his house. Huge hole in the roof/ceiling and a destroyed skylight, too. He still doesn’t have cable service.

Weather has been pretty brutal around the country lately.

No fireplace, unfortunately. And no electricity means no space heater or anything.

Man, that sucks. The snow had melted about 100% this morning, and I checked the sump pump right before the power went off and made it run, so the water was at its lowest level right before the power went out. I think it’d have to start raining right now for there to be an issue at this point.

No cable and no internet make me…something something.

That sucks though. I drove around today and saw a ton of carnage. Snapped a photo of a streetlight that’d fallen on a poor guy’s car.

This was a brutal one though. I saw traffic light parts that had been blow away from their housings, and a Taco bell had their main sign just decimated by the wind. Just insane.

The temperature was down to 58F a few minutes ago, so I booked over to spend the night with la familia. I’ll check on the remote admin console for my router and hopefully it’ll be accessible by tomorrow morning. crosses fingers

Glad you’re safe and that the lines didn’t hit your house.

Must be awesome to see a storm like that.

Maybe it is time to invest in some camping gear? A few gas lights, a heater and a cooking plate.

Heh, our sump was filling every 90 seconds last night – it’s taking a little over two minutes to fill now, so that’s an improvement, at least.

It’s pretty freakin’ scary, honestly. When our storm hit (70+mph winds) I was at a shooting match in the morning and shot through the buildup. We had stages coming apart, one literally while I was shooting it. On the way back into town, I saw a big McDonald’s sign (one of the very tall ones so that the interstate traffic can see it) disintegrate and go flying across the city. At my house it was just a matter of watching siding and trashcans go flapping down the street, I had to keep my shooting glasses on or the flying grit would have blinded me.

Afterwards, I went for a drive, there were dozens of closed roads, and every block had a little tragedy, either a smashed car (not so bad) or a caved-in house (bad) from our formerly-grand trees. But during the storm, there was a definite sense that you could get unlucky and catch somebody’s siding or roof to the throat.

H.

Storms suck. Living in the South, you would think I would be used to them, but they still make me nervous due to the many close calls over the years. Power outages suck total ass.

Hope everyone gets back to normal sooner rather than later.

Still no power yet. Bah!

Awesome in the traditional definition, IE, awe-inspiring, even a little scary. The gusts hit over 60mph where I was at.

Yeah, it definitely could’ve been a lot worse. Really sucks for the neighbors with the scorched garage, all the poor suckers whose cars got nailed by trees and lampposts, etc. I’m lucky the only thing I’m going to deal with is a fridge filled with spoiled goods.

Wow. I’ll be getting back over to my house to take a look today. I’m hoping it hasn’t hit the next trigger point yet.

You’re probably closer to water level where you’re at though, right?

We’re lucky enough to be at the low point of our subdivision, so the melt/rainwater flows to us and into our sump, which then pumps it through an underground pipe into the street (where it goes into the storm sewer).

I think it’s finally quit coming up through the floor, at least (still tons coming through the drain tile underneath).

Hope you get power back sooner than the Thursday I’m reading for some Detroiters.

Good times!

I lucked out. For some reason, my half of the townhouse complex loses power when it threatens to rain. We had a windstorm last night that blew my garbage can to Oz (I really don’t know where it is).

We only lost power for a few hours this morning. Knock on wood. I can’t believe after a storm of that magnitude we were only out for a morning. It’s usually 2 days.

Good luck to all the outage victims.

How did you have internet with no power?

I don’t know about anyone else, but if my notebook is charged I can use dial-up.

Unfortunately, this morning my notebook was as dead as my circuit breaker…

Well, right now I’m camping out with family. Last night with my Dad, tonite with my Grandma.

But while I was at the house, I can fire up the battery backup that runs my networking equipment and use my laptop to get on the net. Or once that’s drained, tether to my cellphone and connect via EDGE.

I have a clock radio that has a hand crank and power adapter to charge a cel phone.

Next year I’ll get that for you for Secret Santa!

What kind do you have? I looked at some at a couple stores but didn’t like the quality or the price.