Got Power?

RagingSamster · 12-15-2006, 05:30 AM

Surviving the WINTER STORM 2006!

I showered and shaved by candle light... woulda been romantic except for the fat balding old guy with shaving cream on his face staring at me in the mirror.

The power went out about 10:00pm, I woke up, then slept for a bit until midnight. I heard the gate at the side of the house creaking/slamming open and closed so I got up put on some clothes and went outside and secured that - then I stood on my back porch and looked around.

Have you ever seen a line of 80-100' tall trees dancing like Chubby Checker? at times looking like arthritic senior citizen limbo dancers trying to bend under an invisible poll. Stuff flying all over, the flashes of far away transformers illuminating the sky. I must have stood out there for ten minutes in my robe under the eave of my back door. I heard big trees snap and fall - quite impressive to hear.

I had to manually open my garage door at 4:30 this morning, (how barbaric!) and my cars headlights were the only man-made lights i could see. driving through the sid3e streets to the highway to work was not too bad. Slow going, winding around large pieces of trees strewn about the road. Of note, I had to maneuver around a "porta-potty" that was in the middle of the road - overturned. All intersections between my home and the freeway were dark - had to treat them as four way stops, but once I hit SR167 in north Auburn it was 60-70 mph all the way in.

Now I'm sitting in my office enjoying a wonderful warm cup of coffee and posting on the internets. The memory of the guy in mirror generates a shudder.

Hopefully the power will be up tonight, but the local media is saying it could be a couple of days.

Gryph? Stang? how did you folks fair up north?

SilverTalon · 12-15-2006, 05:50 AM

Reminds me of reading stories of when Hurricane Isabel hit here a few years back. Just to share a bit of former misery...

Isabel hit us after about a solid week of rain, so the ground was pretty much all mud at this point. The high winds literally knocked down every other tree around here I think, and there were rumored to be a handful of tornados. Out of some 250,000 people living on the VA Penninsula, 20,000 had power. All around the area, it was similarly bad. We were without power for six days, but there were some people especially in outlying areas that were out until Thanksgiving (bear in mind this storm hit in September).

Now, this was in the summertime, so while highly unpleasant with heat indexes measured at 100, there's little "risk" involved like they can be with the Pacific Northwest in the winter.

However, the story of showering by candlelight just brought it all back. We had 2 showers in our house then, but the tub was full of water in case the water supply got contaminated (which it didn't, but it was close for a couple days) so we had to use the other shower. Problem was this was a tiny bathroom where you couldn't safely place a candle anywhere and there were no windows...so you literally had a time window of about 6-8PM where the evening sun would shine through the windows in the master bedroom enough to see.

My current house had power (as near as we can tell) the day after the storm.

Being on the same part of the grid as a hospital ftw? I've since learned that's a very big thing as airports and emergency services top the priority list on such repairs. Things to think about when house shopping!

Stoke · 12-15-2006, 06:03 AM

We've never had to survive for days with no power in the summer time where heat is an issue. All of our experiences have been winter time ice storms. I've been through several of those with no power for 3+ days. Never fun.

Mrs. Stokes parents had days of no power in downtown Orlando the other summer when the hurricanes were WTFPWNing Florida.... The stories were not pleasant....

RagingSamster · 12-15-2006, 06:35 AM

Since I don't have TV at home this is rather nice!

http://live.komotv.com/

Looks like it's better def than my TV tuner card gets... nice stream!

Ghryphen · 12-15-2006, 10:22 AM

Didn't lose power, but the lights flickered and the TV would dim down and come back.

Oh and this:

[img]http://lh3.google.com/image/r*****/RYLb7oim0XI/AAAAAAAAAYg/DEBx56y2akA/s288/DSC00214.JPG[/img] [img]http://lh5.google.com/image/r*****/RYLcEIim0bI/AAAAAAAAAZA/NsAf2qlVeE8/s288/DSC00218.JPG[/img]

http://picasaweb.google.com/r*****/WindStorm

Staying home today to play WoW and make repairs, and play WoW.

Ardamir · 12-15-2006, 01:47 PM

Glad everyone is ok! Its only fun to kids when the power goes out :P

Spinning Hat · 12-15-2006, 02:45 PM

In other words, all texans enjoy when the power is out?

Stang · 12-15-2006, 04:32 PM

We ventured out and saw a few down trees and branches everywhere. A house 2 streets down just missed the huge tree that clipped their house. Luckily only the side corner got hit so not too bad of damage. Surprised we didn't loss power with some of those gusts or find a tree in our backyard. Back porch has a sunroof now

.

We need to carry our camera around with us and or get camera phones

.

RagingSamster · 12-15-2006, 05:01 PM

Well, I'm not going to MC tonight, still no power - I'm at a chinese restaurant in Auburn, a lot of food and them good drinks! (Why do these restaurants pour them so strong?) Please send good ether-vibes. I'm in withdrawal!

TimberWolf · 12-15-2006, 08:59 PM

I remember my first winter here in Ohio two winters ago. There was a terrable ice storm. During the first night all you could hear was the shattering of ice as limbs broke from the trees and fell. Evidently one such limb pulled our lines off the house and polls. Along with the transformer station a mile and a half away was badly damages. The strangest blue glow I had ever seen. My house was out of power for over a week and at times water lost pressure, but no contamination. In the end we had huge branches all over the area down. Several trees leaning into houses. Many more homes were pirced by branches as if they were needles. In my own yard we haad 9 foot branches sticking out of the frozen earth with another 2 feet in the ground.

That scared me more than tornados, which I grew up around back in Texas.

Cass · 12-16-2006, 03:28 PM

Save me.......

we lost power for 2 days and it keeps snowing, its feels like 4C and w are getting something like 90 winds.

Ghryphen · 12-16-2006, 06:42 PM

We thought we were lucky by not losing power, well we made it through the storm, but not the calm after.

Yesterday we lost power in the dead calm weather at about 6pm, we just got power back at 6pm tonight, and I think that is only because I stayed on hold for 30 minutes to report it. The streets paralleling us on either side had power. We went out to get some batteries for our TV and some duraflame logs and when we got back we had power.

It was about 49 degrees in our house today.

RagingSamster · 12-16-2006, 10:25 PM

We got power back last night at around 10:00pm... We had no internet access so I loaded DiabloII and found that it would not run until I patched it (AAARG) luckily Comcast worked diligently and I had a connection by around noon today. I patched up Diablo two and now have a lvl8 warrior named RagingSamster. We invested last year in a gas fireplace so temps stayed almost tolerable - I'm sure my gas bill will be nice

RagingSamster · 12-17-2006, 08:11 AM

I'm arrived at church at 6:40am this morning. DesMoines. WA is completely without power. Some folks brought a couple of generators and we have lights and sound in a sactuary that seats 750 people - the 7;30 service has around 10 folks show up (about 60% of normal early-birds service attendance lolz), The play is going off quite nicely. The muffled drone of generators and the smell of gasoline and exhaust accompanies our celebration of advent

Stang · 12-17-2006, 02:41 PM

I think it was colder inside than outside our house, brrrrr. I didnt want to get out of bed yesterday. It wouldn't have been so bad if we didnt get this cold spell coming thru. We watched tv on an little mini tv fri. night by candle light and fireplace rumbling warmth. But the breakfast at a little diner for an early bday made it better

.

You should have heard us screaming for joy when we turned the corner and saw the lights on on our street

.

12-15-2006, 05:30 AM	#1
RagingSamster Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Age: 59 Posts: 908	Got Power? Surviving the WINTER STORM 2006! I showered and shaved by candle light... woulda been romantic except for the fat balding old guy with shaving cream on his face staring at me in the mirror. The power went out about 10:00pm, I woke up, then slept for a bit until midnight. I heard the gate at the side of the house creaking/slamming open and closed so I got up put on some clothes and went outside and secured that - then I stood on my back porch and looked around. Have you ever seen a line of 80-100' tall trees dancing like Chubby Checker? at times looking like arthritic senior citizen limbo dancers trying to bend under an invisible poll. Stuff flying all over, the flashes of far away transformers illuminating the sky. I must have stood out there for ten minutes in my robe under the eave of my back door. I heard big trees snap and fall - quite impressive to hear. I had to manually open my garage door at 4:30 this morning, (how barbaric!) and my cars headlights were the only man-made lights i could see. driving through the sid3e streets to the highway to work was not too bad. Slow going, winding around large pieces of trees strewn about the road. Of note, I had to maneuver around a "porta-potty" that was in the middle of the road - overturned. All intersections between my home and the freeway were dark - had to treat them as four way stops, but once I hit SR167 in north Auburn it was 60-70 mph all the way in. Now I'm sitting in my office enjoying a wonderful warm cup of coffee and posting on the internets. The memory of the guy in mirror generates a shudder. Hopefully the power will be up tonight, but the local media is saying it could be a couple of days. Gryph? Stang? how did you folks fair up north?

12-15-2006, 05:50 AM	#2
SilverTalon Magniloquent PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: In a van, down by the river Age: 43 Posts: 3,361 Xbox Live Leaderboard: 16^th WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? Reminds me of reading stories of when Hurricane Isabel hit here a few years back. Just to share a bit of former misery... Isabel hit us after about a solid week of rain, so the ground was pretty much all mud at this point. The high winds literally knocked down every other tree around here I think, and there were rumored to be a handful of tornados. Out of some 250,000 people living on the VA Penninsula, 20,000 had power. All around the area, it was similarly bad. We were without power for six days, but there were some people especially in outlying areas that were out until Thanksgiving (bear in mind this storm hit in September). Now, this was in the summertime, so while highly unpleasant with heat indexes measured at 100, there's little "risk" involved like they can be with the Pacific Northwest in the winter. However, the story of showering by candlelight just brought it all back. We had 2 showers in our house then, but the tub was full of water in case the water supply got contaminated (which it didn't, but it was close for a couple days) so we had to use the other shower. Problem was this was a tiny bathroom where you couldn't safely place a candle anywhere and there were no windows...so you literally had a time window of about 6-8PM where the evening sun would shine through the windows in the master bedroom enough to see. My current house had power (as near as we can tell) the day after the storm. Being on the same part of the grid as a hospital ftw? I've since learned that's a very big thing as airports and emergency services top the priority list on such repairs. Things to think about when house shopping! __________________ "But there's no sense crying over every mistake, You just keep on trying till you run out of cake"

12-15-2006, 06:03 AM	#3
Stoke Seahorse PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: North Carolina Old Folks Home Age: 56 Posts: 4,041 WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? We've never had to survive for days with no power in the summer time where heat is an issue. All of our experiences have been winter time ice storms. I've been through several of those with no power for 3+ days. Never fun. Mrs. Stokes parents had days of no power in downtown Orlando the other summer when the hurricanes were WTFPWNing Florida.... The stories were not pleasant....

12-15-2006, 06:35 AM	#4
RagingSamster Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Age: 59 Posts: 908	Re: Got Power? Since I don't have TV at home this is rather nice! http://live.komotv.com/ Looks like it's better def than my TV tuner card gets... nice stream!

12-15-2006, 10:22 AM	#5
Ghryphen Officer PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: WA, USA Posts: 4,733 WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? Didn't lose power, but the lights flickered and the TV would dim down and come back. Oh and this: [img]http://lh3.google.com/image/r***/RYLb7oim0XI/AAAAAAAAAYg/DEBx56y2akA/s288/DSC00214.JPG[/img] [img]http://lh5.google.com/image/r*/RYLcEIim0bI/AAAAAAAAAZA/NsAf2qlVeE8/s288/DSC00218.JPG[/img] http://picasaweb.google.com/r**/WindStorm Staying home today to play WoW and make repairs, and play WoW. __________________ The Hounds of Zeus \| Allied Tribal Forces Last edited by Ghryphen; 12-15-2006 at 10:25 AM.*

12-15-2006, 01:47 PM	#6
Ardamir Registered User Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Texas Posts: 1,112	Re: Got Power? Glad everyone is ok! Its only fun to kids when the power goes out :P __________________

12-15-2006, 02:45 PM	#7
Spinning Hat XMEN - CO PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Minneapolis, MN USA Age: 44 Posts: 2,570 Xbox Live Leaderboard: 15^th WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? In other words, all texans enjoy when the power is out?

12-15-2006, 04:32 PM	#8
Stang THZ* - CO PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Everett, WA, USA Age: 50 Posts: 3,925 Xbox Live Leaderboard: 5^th WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? We ventured out and saw a few down trees and branches everywhere. A house 2 streets down just missed the huge tree that clipped their house. Luckily only the side corner got hit so not too bad of damage. Surprised we didn't loss power with some of those gusts or find a tree in our backyard. Back porch has a sunroof now . We need to carry our camera around with us and or get camera phones . __________________ Last edited by Stang; 12-15-2006 at 04:38 PM.

12-15-2006, 05:01 PM	#9
RagingSamster Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Age: 59 Posts: 908	Re: Got Power? Well, I'm not going to MC tonight, still no power - I'm at a chinese restaurant in Auburn, a lot of food and them good drinks! (Why do these restaurants pour them so strong?) Please send good ether-vibes. I'm in withdrawal!

12-15-2006, 08:59 PM	#10
TimberWolf LoS-XO, ATF Resident Goober PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: WV Posts: 917	Re: Got Power? I remember my first winter here in Ohio two winters ago. There was a terrable ice storm. During the first night all you could hear was the shattering of ice as limbs broke from the trees and fell. Evidently one such limb pulled our lines off the house and polls. Along with the transformer station a mile and a half away was badly damages. The strangest blue glow I had ever seen. My house was out of power for over a week and at times water lost pressure, but no contamination. In the end we had huge branches all over the area down. Several trees leaning into houses. Many more homes were pirced by branches as if they were needles. In my own yard we haad 9 foot branches sticking out of the frozen earth with another 2 feet in the ground. That scared me more than tornados, which I grew up around back in Texas. __________________ LoS-TimberWolf Proud Member of LoS Vehicle Specilist in Tribes 1, 2 "Republican Ideology advanced the concept of 'civic virtue' - the idea that democracy depended on the unselfish commitment of each citizen to the public good." from The Brief American Pageant 6st edition

12-16-2006, 03:28 PM	#11
Cass Registered User PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Canada. BC Age: 33 Posts: 531 WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? Save me....... we lost power for 2 days and it keeps snowing, its feels like 4C and w are getting something like 90 winds. __________________ Crashing Cows since day 1.

12-16-2006, 06:42 PM	#12
Ghryphen Officer PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: WA, USA Posts: 4,733 WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? We thought we were lucky by not losing power, well we made it through the storm, but not the calm after. Yesterday we lost power in the dead calm weather at about 6pm, we just got power back at 6pm tonight, and I think that is only because I stayed on hold for 30 minutes to report it. The streets paralleling us on either side had power. We went out to get some batteries for our TV and some duraflame logs and when we got back we had power. It was about 49 degrees in our house today.

12-16-2006, 10:25 PM	#13
RagingSamster Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Age: 59 Posts: 908	Re: Got Power? We got power back last night at around 10:00pm... We had no internet access so I loaded DiabloII and found that it would not run until I patched it (AAARG) luckily Comcast worked diligently and I had a connection by around noon today. I patched up Diablo two and now have a lvl8 warrior named RagingSamster. We invested last year in a gas fireplace so temps stayed almost tolerable - I'm sure my gas bill will be nice

12-17-2006, 08:11 AM	#14
RagingSamster Registered User Join Date: May 2003 Age: 59 Posts: 908	Re: Got Power? I'm arrived at church at 6:40am this morning. DesMoines. WA is completely without power. Some folks brought a couple of generators and we have lights and sound in a sactuary that seats 750 people - the 7;30 service has around 10 folks show up (about 60% of normal early-birds service attendance lolz), The play is going off quite nicely. The muffled drone of generators and the smell of gasoline and exhaust accompanies our celebration of advent

12-17-2006, 02:41 PM	#15
Stang THZ* - CO PlanetSide Characters Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Everett, WA, USA Age: 50 Posts: 3,925 Xbox Live Leaderboard: 5^th WoW Characters	Re: Got Power? I think it was colder inside than outside our house, brrrrr. I didnt want to get out of bed yesterday. It wouldn't have been so bad if we didnt get this cold spell coming thru. We watched tv on an little mini tv fri. night by candle light and fireplace rumbling warmth. But the breakfast at a little diner for an early bday made it better . You should have heard us screaming for joy when we turned the corner and saw the lights on on our street .