Not quite heaven for a week and a day
Most of our friends have already heard our tale, but it deserves a detail telling here. It all began, for me anyway, on March 22. I walked out to the mailbox (yes, in rural-life, one must actually MOVE one's person to retrieve the mail) and noted the sound of the wind. It actually reminded me of the ocean - a blog I had planned to write, but has been replaced by this entry. The wind was strong, although not the strongest we had and it reminded me of the sound of the surf crashing along the shore of Big Sur. My own little slice of pretend-coastal living. For the moment anyway. That Friday, the weather turned a bit ugly. Still very windy and now wet with ice/snow. D came home with the flu a little early and our Friday fish-nite outing was put aside. Saturday morning, we woke up to the wind, now approaching 30-40 mph. And, the talk of the impending storm. We were fully stocked with groceries, milk, water, beer, so we nestled in to watch it arrive, or not as is usually the case when there's so much hype.
This time, the weather folks were right, though. As predicted, a cold morning rain turned into an ice shower. One like we had not seen before. Winds were at least 40 mph and they brough this rain of ice that cast a sparkle on everything in sight. At about 20 minutes before 3pm, I made the comment to D that we should open the electric garage door in the event that the power went out. Unfortunately, the door was already iced shut and we had 25 minutes before we lost electricity. The whole city of Mount Vernon went down. We knew that was sort of good news for us rural dwellers - if the whole city was out, we'd be likely to get power back at a relatively reasonable timeframe versus if it was just our rural area supporting few large farms or homes. I immediately went into protection mode - clothed the kids in every warm garment I could find, pulled out every battery-operated lighting device available and grabbed all available blankets before it got dark (would've been nice to run the must blankets thru the wash. . .). My bread that was attempting to rise in the oven was ruined, which was ok, since I too felt the flu coming on. We coached the kids on behavior without electricty, although A, the 3-yr old, found it hard to understand why he couldn't play computers.
An hour later, our neighbors lost a huge tree, blocking our direct road to town. Fortunately, the tree only brought down the powerline to their house and not the mainline along the road. We were a little trapped and the storm was getting scarier, but we were still on the grid. But only for another 30 or 40 minutes. As the wind whipped and the ice continued to fall, we atched as the power lines sagged closer and closer to the ground, like they were giving up the fight. And, evetually they did. I heard the line snap somewhere around 5:00 or so. This was going to be a long outage.
Now, we have a fireplace in our home. So, one would think that we might be able to heat it. Our experiences with this fireplace have not been good. Everytime we've gone to light it, we end up with a living room full of smoke. But, we attempted to light a small heat in hope of generating a little extra heat. All was well; it was blowing up the chimney as it should until we threw on another log. The house filled up with smoke and we were forced to extinguish the small fire we had ANd open the doors and windows to air us out. The baby was mad. I put more clothes on the children and fixed jelly sandwiches.
We slept in the living room that night, huddled together on the floor with as many blankets as we could find. The wind continued its howl through the night (no longer sounds like the ocean, by the way). It was scary to listen to and between the noise and the floor and an uncomfortable baby, oh and that fever with the flu, I slept very little.
We woke up Sunday to snow flying, a bit less wind and lots of downed trees, branches, and wires. It seemed the worst was over, but we had now way to leave as our garage was iced shut with the electric door closed. We have no door into out garage either! The temp in the house seemed to level off at about 55. The kids set about for a day of coloring and games. No, A we can't watch cartoonies.
By 3 pm, this little power adventure started to suck. We had no running water. Our stove is electric, so if we wanted to heat anything up, we had to venture out to the grill. Fortunately, D was up to the challenge. Not only did he fix us all some chicken noodle soup, but he managed to climb through the garage window and lift the door. Some utility or city worker even came out to carve a lane open past our neighbor's fallen tree. So, we could get out, if we needed to. But, it seemed as if there was nowhere to go! Power was still out throughout the area - the mall was closed! And baby P had a nasty diaper rash that made her grouchy. We kept in touch with the in-laws in case they got power restored before we did. Finally, after almost 26 hours, the 'rents gave the "all warm" sign that their in-town home was fully lit. In record-speed, we took 10 minutes to evacuate for at least a day or two. Little did we know, that we would be camped out at grandma & grandpa's house for a week and a day! This is a week that included flu recovery for 4 of the 5 family members, a second snow storm and 2 snow days. It also was a week full of disappointed anticipation as we spotted utility workes near our property as early as Wednesday. Finally, on Sunday, Mar 25, we ventured out to the house to find the heat had kicked in at about 7:30 pm. We returned to begin the clean-up the next day. It took us another week to get back into the flow of normal life.
This time, the weather folks were right, though. As predicted, a cold morning rain turned into an ice shower. One like we had not seen before. Winds were at least 40 mph and they brough this rain of ice that cast a sparkle on everything in sight. At about 20 minutes before 3pm, I made the comment to D that we should open the electric garage door in the event that the power went out. Unfortunately, the door was already iced shut and we had 25 minutes before we lost electricity. The whole city of Mount Vernon went down. We knew that was sort of good news for us rural dwellers - if the whole city was out, we'd be likely to get power back at a relatively reasonable timeframe versus if it was just our rural area supporting few large farms or homes. I immediately went into protection mode - clothed the kids in every warm garment I could find, pulled out every battery-operated lighting device available and grabbed all available blankets before it got dark (would've been nice to run the must blankets thru the wash. . .). My bread that was attempting to rise in the oven was ruined, which was ok, since I too felt the flu coming on. We coached the kids on behavior without electricty, although A, the 3-yr old, found it hard to understand why he couldn't play computers.
An hour later, our neighbors lost a huge tree, blocking our direct road to town. Fortunately, the tree only brought down the powerline to their house and not the mainline along the road. We were a little trapped and the storm was getting scarier, but we were still on the grid. But only for another 30 or 40 minutes. As the wind whipped and the ice continued to fall, we atched as the power lines sagged closer and closer to the ground, like they were giving up the fight. And, evetually they did. I heard the line snap somewhere around 5:00 or so. This was going to be a long outage.
Now, we have a fireplace in our home. So, one would think that we might be able to heat it. Our experiences with this fireplace have not been good. Everytime we've gone to light it, we end up with a living room full of smoke. But, we attempted to light a small heat in hope of generating a little extra heat. All was well; it was blowing up the chimney as it should until we threw on another log. The house filled up with smoke and we were forced to extinguish the small fire we had ANd open the doors and windows to air us out. The baby was mad. I put more clothes on the children and fixed jelly sandwiches.
We slept in the living room that night, huddled together on the floor with as many blankets as we could find. The wind continued its howl through the night (no longer sounds like the ocean, by the way). It was scary to listen to and between the noise and the floor and an uncomfortable baby, oh and that fever with the flu, I slept very little.
We woke up Sunday to snow flying, a bit less wind and lots of downed trees, branches, and wires. It seemed the worst was over, but we had now way to leave as our garage was iced shut with the electric door closed. We have no door into out garage either! The temp in the house seemed to level off at about 55. The kids set about for a day of coloring and games. No, A we can't watch cartoonies.
By 3 pm, this little power adventure started to suck. We had no running water. Our stove is electric, so if we wanted to heat anything up, we had to venture out to the grill. Fortunately, D was up to the challenge. Not only did he fix us all some chicken noodle soup, but he managed to climb through the garage window and lift the door. Some utility or city worker even came out to carve a lane open past our neighbor's fallen tree. So, we could get out, if we needed to. But, it seemed as if there was nowhere to go! Power was still out throughout the area - the mall was closed! And baby P had a nasty diaper rash that made her grouchy. We kept in touch with the in-laws in case they got power restored before we did. Finally, after almost 26 hours, the 'rents gave the "all warm" sign that their in-town home was fully lit. In record-speed, we took 10 minutes to evacuate for at least a day or two. Little did we know, that we would be camped out at grandma & grandpa's house for a week and a day! This is a week that included flu recovery for 4 of the 5 family members, a second snow storm and 2 snow days. It also was a week full of disappointed anticipation as we spotted utility workes near our property as early as Wednesday. Finally, on Sunday, Mar 25, we ventured out to the house to find the heat had kicked in at about 7:30 pm. We returned to begin the clean-up the next day. It took us another week to get back into the flow of normal life.
posted by Charlene at 11:21 AM
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