Anybody else lost power or other services because of last night’s storm? I am in southern New Hampshire, and we got about 6 inches of heavy wet snow and heavy winds. The trees haven’t lost all their leaves yet, so the are a lot of downed trees and branches causing service interruption across the state. About 200,000 in NH without power.
I lost power, internet and cable TV service at about 8:00pm last night, and it stayed off since then. With the power out, my furnace doesn’t work, so it is about 58 in the house right now. I have a generator, but can’t run the furnace as it is wired into the house, and I don’t have a transfer switch installed, and I don’t want to backfeed the generator into the house wiring. So my refrigerator and freezer are now working, and I have some lights and small appliances.
I have no water, as I am on an electric well. I have three cases of bottled water, and about 20 gallons of water in buckets to flush the toilets with. If it’s yellow it’s mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down.
I am posting this from a laptop connected through my Verizon Blackberry Mobile Broadband, as my cable internet is out. No estimates yet on when it will be restored; could be days.
Some large branches fell, one hit the corner of the house and did minor damage. Another 40 foot tree bent all the way over and is now touching the roof, so that will have to be dealt with before it damages the shingles. Not much other damage though.
The snow is melting fast, and it should be in the 50’s by tomorrow.
I’m in Central NJ where snow began to mix in with rain yesterday morning. It rained and snowed off and on most of the day until late in the afternoon when it turned to all snow. I woke up this morning to about an inch of snow and ice. However, we didn’t lose power, thank goodness. I heard there are a lot of power outages in northern NJ though.
This is the earliest it’s snowed here in years. I had my boat hauled out for the season just last week.
Oddly enough, we in the frozen north had a bright sunny day yesterday, although it did cloud up later and there was snow predicted for Sherbrooke, 100 miles east.
Our power kicked off at 545 this morning, and we discovered that it was because the line was down [yet again] at our driveway [the line breaks and the dangly end taps the dirt at the mouth of our drive. When it is dry the debris catches fire.] when the DPW plow rolled past and whacked the line, causing it to do the 60 cycle bbbbzattt fairly loudly. We had just called to report the power outage, so we had to call back and report the line down. A truck pulled up in front of the house and paused for about 5 minutes before making a K turn and leaving and we surmise that he called 911 because a statie pulled up about 10 minutes later and checked to see how badly the line was down. CL&P truck rolled in at about 10 am and repaired the break.
We took out a pot of coffee and chatted them up a bit. CL&P has all of 5 2 man work crews repairing all of eastern CT. Obviously the money we pay does not go to repairing and maintaining the infrastructure :dubious:
Massachusetts here. Lost power around 10pm, got a total of about 3 inches. Downed trees and branches everywhere, onhuge branch is suspended in the lines right in front of my house. Ran out of water (well, electric pump) around 3pm today. The house is 49 degrees inside, so I’m bundled up. We’re going to a friend’s house this evening to shower, then back home to sleep. Hopefully the power will be back by tomorrow…
sigh back in the 70s in western NY that would have qualified as a generic winters night worth of snow. We barely got a snow day until it started to hit a foot of snow overnight.
What is it with people panicing over 3 or 4 inches of snow in 8 hours?:rolleyes:
We got a nice little mix of icy rain and snow outside Philly. I had some errands to run early Saturday morning and I was a little shocked at how slick the roads were. I finished by noon and settled back in for the day. I thought we would only get the rainy mix, but we did get some real flakes later on in the afternoon and evening.
The dog loved the inch of snow in the backyard. It was gone by noon Sunday.
In this case, it isn’t the snow so much as the timing. Here (NYS between Albany and NYC) there are still a ton of leaves left on the trees. The weight of the 7 or 8 inches of wet snow we received brought down dozens of branches and a number of trees in my neighborhood alone; it was worse in outlying areas. Some branches struck houses on the way down, or banged into cars, or blocked roads: there were three in my path last night that forced me to detour. The high wind sure didn’t help either. Branches lose a lot of flexibility when they’re weighed down and held in place by snow.
Also, history: There was a similar snow back in October of '87 and a more recent one in the early spring after many trees had started blooming. People who’ve lived here for a while remember very well the destructiveness of both of them. This brought back some bad memories for lots of these folks. There was also–December of '09, I think?–a very bad ice storm that brought down a lot of trees in my county and points north, with unpleasant consequences for property, comfort, and health.
So, yes, I wonder sometimes about why people freak out over five or six inches of snow, too, but now and then they have good reason to worry.
It’s not the 3 or 4 inches of snow that is the problem. 2 million people without power for a week and 8 dead; that’s a problem. Did that happen in NY every generic winter night of snow?
Oh, and, they got 31 inches of snow in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
We (in Maryland) escaped. Which is surprising since lately it seems every bad storm hits MD.
After Irene, when I lost power for 5 days, I swore I will not sit in the dark again and ordered a 17K generator. Unfortunately, they will only install it by mid-Nov. Since I ordered it, we lost power for 5-hr stretches a couple of times. Can’t wait for the generator to be here. Hate long power outages. And judging by recent winters, more storms are coming.
Got my cable/internet/phone service back tonight. Still no power/heat/water. Power company still saying up to a week. I am getting a kerosene heater delivered tomorrow. Now if I could just find somewhere to take a shower…
No but it seems like they handled snow and storms a hell of a lot better. Back in the early 90s when we first moved to CT we had some pretty hard winters and didn’t lose power every other month for a freaking week. In general the power if it got knocked out by storm was back within the day. We didn’t get a generator until about 99 [prep for the millenium to be honest]
I do not remember losing power all the damned time in the 60s and 70s and 80s either. hell, I got snowed in late December of 84 when I lived on the lake shore of Lake Ontario for 9 days and we still had power. [Hilton was not known for getting around to plowing out what was normally summer rental areas in December, we had to call the town 4 or 5 times before we got plowed out.]
First day back after about 3 days out of power. What people don’t get is thet NJ has a LOT of trees. And that most of our power lines are still on poles above ground. What I didn’t get was that my gas furnace still needed electricity to run.
I’m very grateful to have power back, that I had an old-fashioned wood fireplace to shovel wood through, and that I have a smaller Subaru to dodge downed live wires & branches. On a side note, our electric stove is fast approaching the end of its life cycle and I’m stating here, in writing,
that It Will Be A Cold Day In Hell when I agree to another electric stove.
Western NY is good at handling snow, because they get a ton of it, and by necessity put more effort into snow proofing their systems. This storm is more like Rochester’s 1991 ice storm, which hammered the area. A freak situation that causes more damage than a typical storm of the type.
We had multiple large limbs come down, multiple lines down all over the neighborhood, even whole trees coming down across roads. Nothing like a regular snowstorm.
