Hope @Hari_Seldon is okay.
36 hours after the start of the freezing rain, one third of Montreal still has no power. Most of downtown is unaffected.
Ice storms are horrible. Hope everybody gets their power back soon.
Nice to see this sentence (from the OP link):
- If the power or data on your device is low, get your storm updates on CBC Lite. It’s our low-bandwidth, text-only website.
I don’t know if this is standard, but I’m glad to see it. When you’re in such a situation, basic information is all you need.
There was a storm some time ago - I think it might have been a hurricane? - where people were getting frustrated because all the weather they could access on their phones was heavy-bandwidth fancy stuff. Under the circumstances it might as well have not existed for all the use it was to them. A bunch of other people including me spent some time rendering the information into low-bandwidth text for them so they could use it.
Glad someone was thinking about that this time.
I’ve never seen that sort of notice before, but yes, sounds like a very good idea. Glad to see CBC providing it. I don’t know if other news media are doing that.
CNN does. Although the Discourse infobox doesn’t look like it.
Ice storms are horrible.
A politician who publicly hopes it warms up soon and tells people ‘My message to Quebecers is to be patient’ is an ass.
I’m reminded of the Lexington, Kentucky mayor who responded to inefficient street clearing after a snowstorm by saying “Time is on our side” and “It’s worse in Louisville”.
I don’t think it’s a bad comment in context. Quebecers remember the Great Ice Storm of 1998: it happened in January, and because of Canadian winter, it meant that the effects were felt for a couple of months: the ice wasn’t going anywhere in January and February.
Different now in early April. This is exceptional for this time of year, and spring temperatures will mean the ice will go fairly quickly.
(Says Piper, optimistically, while looking out at a back garden of snow.)
A problem with an ice storm in April, rather than in January, is that power-less people can’t simply put the contents of their fridge/freezer outside to stay cool.
True! I agree it’s very disruptive.
I like that. Thanks!
Patience is important.
But publicly counseling distressed people to be patient is face-palmingly insensitive.
I disagree. I want leaders to be straight with me. When there’s a big event like this, some patience is needed. I don’t want him to lie and say “It’ll all be right in two hours.” If I’m one of those citizens in that situation, I want a realistic summary of what we face and how long it will be until power’s back. That includes patience on my part.
Public announcements from government officials during such events should stress maximum efforts being made to clean up, and restore transport and power.
People are far more apt to be patient if they can see that the utmost is being done.
“No worries, hold your horses, it’ll melt before too long” just doesn’t cut it.
It’s kinda like waiting for a table at a busy restaurant. I’d rather be undersold than oversold. That is, tell me it’s a 20 minute wait and seat me in 10 or 15? Yay! Tell me 20 minutes, and you don’t seat me for 35-40 minutes? Boo!
But I also prefer that they be as honest as possible.
Reporting in. If you looked at the map of power outages my town was almost all black except for a few scattered white patches, one of which was my building. Everything around us was dark, but we had power the whole time.
What we lost early yesterday (Thursday) morning was internet, phone, and TV service all from the same provider. We had been supposed to go to a seder at friends Wednesday evening, but that had to canceled because they were without power. Tentatively, we decided to postpone it till Thursday, but their power didn’t come back. So we invited them over here, although not for the seder (we just didn’t have the makings of it) and they came bringing a pot of matzah ball soup. So we had that and I made a large matzah brie. It’s a kind of french toast with matzah and is really quite good.
It was funny getting to contact them. Their son had come from New Brunswick to help with and go to the seder. Oddly, I had in my telephone list the son’s wife’s cell phone number, but not the son’s. So I called her and got it and then could call the son using my cell phone, since both my and my friends landlines were not working. When they all came over here, the son took the opportunity recharge his phone and laptop and set up a hotspot that allowed me to briefly connect and check my mail. He showed me how to set up a hotspot on my phone, but while I had cell phone service, the server’s internet was still down and I could not do the same on my phone.
Five minutes after my friends returned home, their power went on. My landline was still dead at 4 AM this morning but everything was back to normal here by 7. My friend’s phone and internet were still down at 8:37, but were back by 8:47.
This morning we tried to go to our supermarket but, as we got there, they were closing. They explained they had run our of gas. This was presumably to power their emergency generators and, I assumed, all the local gas stations were either out of power or had already sold all they had.
Fun times. But nothing like the '98 ice storm. Worse than the great flood from Bastille Day '87. My wife walked home 4 miles from downtown that day (the buses were theoretically running, although the Metro was not, but the traffic jams were incredible with no traffic lights) to find the rest of us listening to the All-Star game on a portable radio.
So far, they have reported only one death–from a falling tree.
Great to hear that you’re okay.
Edited - sorry about the adds.
Thanks for checking in, @Hari_Seldon. I’m glad all is well with you and yours – phone games notwithstanding!
I remember Bastille Day 1987 as well. Seven inches of rain in two hours in parts of Montreal. At work, we had sand bags (usually used to temporarily anchor equipment), and successfully stopped water from coming under our basement office doors. One “depressed” highway had several feet of water in it - firemen had to lower ladders to rescue those standing on the roofs of their cars. Summer or winter - such once-in-a-hundred-year events happen.