I live in Lexington KY. The ice here is plenty bad, but not quite as bad as 2003, and we are not as hard hit as the western part of the state. Still, there are plenty of lines down - I think we had 125k without power out of roughly 270k population - trees are down on houses and across streets and roads all over town. Our city streets were treated pretty well prior to the storm, so were clear (of ice anyway) by the second day. Sidewalks, driveways and yards still have 1/2 to 1 inch of ice over snow, and are treacherous.

I lost power at home for about 36 hours - 2 days and 1 night. At the hospital where I work, it was 4 days, and at one point we lost generator power for a couple of hours! It is a rehab, not acute care, but when the generator went out, they started talking about transferring some of the patients out.

Like Blast in the hurricane, I have assessed my preparations, and was generally pleased, but did find some holes. As I have discussed here earlier, heat was a worry for me, in a townhouse. I found heat in the house was retained a surprisingly long time. I had about 10 "Duraflame" logs, but I did not use the fireplace at all. It was fairly comfortable at night, but was pretty chilly the next morning. The water in the hot water heater stayed warm a long time too. I have at 2 other stoves, (Coleman 1 burner and a 2 burner propane) but for this I used a can of sterno over a folding camp stove on top of my regular stove. It was perfectly adequate to heat a can of tomato soup, cook a grilled cheese sandwich, and heat two teakettles of water - one to supplement the warm water to wash dishes, and another for hot drinks the rest of the evening. I probably burned the Sterno for 2 hours and did not use the whole can. I have several kerosene lamps, plenty of food and batteries and did not have to use stored water because the water continued to work. I was well set for the recommended 3 days, and think I would have been OK longer, but it would have been rough with single-digit nighttime temps for the weeks or a month some are looking at and did experience here in '03.

My Coleman mini LED lantern was a tremendous help in walking from room to room, and was fine to read by - more convenient to handle than a flashlight. Overall though, it was a little boring. I may add a battery-powered walkman type CD player. Even better would be one of those little personal DVD players (I don't have a laptop), but I don't know what alternate power sources could be used. I have concentrated so much on long-term planning lately, I think I need a few more short-term food items - stew, hearty soups and the like, to heat and eat.

It was good to have a real test that was fairly short, to get a more subjective look at my emergency prep.