Winter Wonder Land

A big ice storm was predicted for Saturday and into Sunday, today.  The snow isn't so much a problem.  Its the ice.  It gets on things, like trees, bushes, the road, and power lines. Power lines are the thing.  Ice gets on them, they get heavy, and they break.  Early this morning the power went out.  It was about 2:00 am when it went out.  I sleep with a machine and when the power goes off it wakes me up because I can't breath anymore.  It woke a few of us up this morning.  You could hear lines and trees snapping, in the front of the house you could see blue electric light flashing out front somewhere, and hear the electricity sizzling.  Kind of exciting for a few minutes.  Then it was quiet.  We all hoped the power would come right back on but no such luck. So Bombeere took a couple of pictures outside and we all eventually went back to bed and to sleep.

It started getting light around 7:00 am.  The bedroom window had frosted over a bit.  The house had cooled off some but I couldn't tell what the temperature was because the thermostat is electric and was dark.

I had slept kind of fitfully since the power went off.  One of the things that my mind had grabbed a hold of, and got stuck on, was the fact that our space heater was out in the garage, along with the kerosene to run it, but that meant I had to find it.

That was a daunting task, especially without the lights to be able to see with.  So I got dressed, grabbed a little camp lantern, and took it out to the garage to start looking.  I was able to see the heater right away. It was getting to it that proved a challenge.  You can actually see both the heater and the kerosene can in this picture, they're just behind everything and up high.

It took me a few minutes to dig a path to them, but I was able to get them both out.  The can proved to be empty but it felt like there was still some kerosene in the heater.  So I brought it up to where I could work on it and went in the house to get some stuff to clean it up.  The plan was to clean it up and get it fired up and working and then go back out and find the other kerosene cans to see if any of them had anything in them.  The power company was estimating that the power would be back on around 10:00 am. Happy thing, though.  While I was inside getting some stuff to clean with the power came back on.  So I traded my cleaning tools for my camera and took some pictures.

It was hard to tell just how much new snow had fallen because it was still blowing pretty hard.  The snow was still falling, too.  We're supposed to get winds over 50 mph today.  Blizzard conditions.  All the emergency services and law enforcement agencies are saying travel is extremely dangerous, don't go out in your cars; they can't come rescue anyone that gets stuck.  This time, a little more extreme than the towing bans that have become so common around here recently.

Out the garage back door, where we haven't shoveled all winter, it looked pretty deep.  These stacks of tires are four tires tall.

Lots of snow piled up on everything.

Ice coating the branches and wires.  But it wasn't all that cold, as winter around here goes, about 33 degrees.

The thermostat was back on, the cheerful sound of the furnace quietly heating the house back up could be heard.  The house was only a few degrees cooler than where we usually keep it.

I went around to reset clocks but only found two that needed it, the microwave and stove.

All the rest were either battery clocks or had reset themselves.  I like that kind of clock, the kind that reset themselves.  After giving our hot water heater a little time to get back up to its usual heat, everything was back to normal.  And that was the end of our adventure into the world of no electricity.  I like that our community has a reliable power system. In the ten or twelve years we've lived here this is only the second or third time we've lost power in a storm.  That's a happy thing.