MidWest Ice Storms

Ah, our power is back on - 96 hours on the dot. I'm down to a few hundred in my town still waiting, but there are thousands out of the metro area who will be without for some time.

Nothing special to report - family did all the usual things and we were comfortable enough - only mildly inconvenienced. Two neighbors sheltered in place (home) for the first time; the rest took off as usual. One was a little better prepared than before and the other was miserable but OK. I guess that's some progress.

Good thing it hasn't been real cold since the storm. High winds due the next 2 days, so we'll see if there is a minor repeat. We are re-stocked <shrug>.

Tom

Thanks for the heads up Tom- I've got the same beast due around midnight.

Hey, long time no hear from. If anyone can survive I figure it is you. Stay warm...

We went through about 3 weeks of power-out in this area some weeks ago.

Some years ago, several members of the family went through several weeks (seemed like years) of power-out in the upper mid west.

Some people here made an adventure out of the whole thing. The three of us were pretty sure that we would lose our "little minds".

It did one thing for me...it made me decide to become prepared to live without electric power. While it is not my favorite thing, I think I'll behave differently if it ever happens again. The whole experience was a real eye-opener!

Three weeks in the dead of winter is a whole 'nother topic than a few days in late winter. Outages in a large metro area due to ice / winds are pretty much a consequence of damaged distribution systems and solutions are usually pretty prompt - apply lots of manpower and the needed materials (mostly poles and perhaps some transformers) - if major transmission lines bringing power into areas have extensive damage (to towers), that takes more time and materials, but most of it boils down to wooden poles, manpower, and perhaps some cabling.

We (my family) live pretty high up on the technology hog in our daily lives, yet are very comfortable for extended periods of "hardship" due to our "recreational" activities. Assuming one is reasonably prepared to safely manage through a short duration outage, the main difficulty is the large uncertainty regarding when power will be restored.

Daily life outside the house continues either normally or at an accelerated pace, depending on each person's responsibilities in the community / at work. But work and/or school continues, regardless.

The difficulty is knowing how much of what should reasonably be done when in order to avoid complicating problems if the outage continues, the weather gets worse, and other things not under one's control. When do you decide to take the time to blow down water lines, pickle the traps, and close down home operations to a core area of the home? Those things take time to do (and in some cases, time to undo). If you KNOW you're going to be without grid power for, say, two weeks, then you can plan to do things in an orderly and efficient manner. But if all you know is it's been out for 2 days and it might be on tomorrow - or it could take a heck of a lot longer, then there are daily decisions to be made that need to be acted upon.

It's interesting just adapting to really mundane changes. Do we need to make an effort to launder clothes or will the power be back on time before we run out of appropriate clean clothing for work/school? Propane restock NOW or wait for the sales after the outage is over? Run the genset to cooldown refers or eat the quickly perishables or... well, it's interesting to me. (OK - fun for a while - haven't run past the "fun" part that I can recall).

It's easy to go way overboard with this sort of thing - and a few folks do, of course. This was not a particularly threatening situation and very, very few made a big deal of it. Drop the temps 15 degrees and it all changes, but it's still not that big of a deal. But you can get a lot of teaching/learning done with your kids (or some neighbors) in these events that will probably be useful to them as they progress through life.

I've rambled on long enough and my brain is pre-occupied with some community issues I identified. We'll work those out shortly with the regional power company to our mutual benefit. It was fun to practice with here at home anyway.

Regards to everyone,

Tom

"Two neighbors sheltered in place (home) for the first time; the rest took off as usual. One was a little better prepared than before and the other was miserable but OK."

"It did one thing for me...it made me decide to become prepared to live without electric power. While it is not my favorite thing, I think I'll behave differently if it ever happens again. The whole experience was a real eye-opener!"

Nothing gets the point across like being miserable. After that, people seem to fall into two groups:
1) It won't happen again, so why prepare for nothing? and
2) You're da**ed right it won't happen again: I'm getting prepared before the next time!