3:35am and counting...

[2-8-2]

Ugh.

There's been some heavy freezing rain in my neck of the woods the past couple days. The kind that snaps power lines and bends trees in half. There has been flooding in other parts of the county, and it's not letting up anytime soon.

I moved in with my parents a couple months ago after my wife and I separated. Since I live in the basement, I told my parents I'd stay up keep an eye on the sump pumps. There is so much ground water, it's taking 3 pumps just to keep up. A power outage would make things get ugly in a hurry.

So...here I sit with flashlight in hand, fighting an internet connection that's been dropping every 10 minutes with my instruction on how to fire up the generator if the power goes out. Fun stuff.

I think I'm on can of Mt. Dew #4.

 

[Chessie6459]

We are getting hammered pretty good here in Pennsylvania. Power went out twice and the lights keep on flickering. Suprizingly there were no wrecks, my home town fire company has been out alot because of alot trees and wires being knocked down. I just got off the phone with my pap and they have no power up at his house. I hope this all ends soon. I would rather see snow than ice. Ice Storms are always bad here in Pa.

 

[ausien]

Good luck guys, and keep the bateries charged for that flash light. I usualy sign of with (have a good one,) but in this instance I`ll say.... have a safe one...steve

 

[Glen Haasdyk]

It's 5:35am here in British Columbia. No Ice storms but fairly cold. Hope your power doesn't go out. Biggest problem I have right now is the starter on my old dodge is starting to grind away at it's flywheel. Hope I can get a new starter into it before the flywheel goes. These thing always seem to happen when the temps hit their lowest.
Stay warm, stay safe.

 

[ezdays]

One thing we don't have to worry about in the Phoenix metro area is ice and snow. We do occasionally have flooding though. We have had seven years of drought, but when it does rain hard we have normally dry washes and creeks running and other rivers and creeks overflowing. So far this year we have had heavy rain here for about five days, with more forecast over the next week. We have had heavy winds and flooding. We had a tornado watch the night before last where a funnel cloud came over our house and drifted to the east side of the county. Fortunately, it didn't touch down, but it brough a lot of hail for a period of time. In addition, they opened a dam above the Salt River that runs through the center of Phoenix. It is normally a dry river bed, but it has been flowing hard for the past three days now closing roads and bridges. There have been a ton of rescues, several recoveries and still are searching for several missing people. None of these things should have happened but some here think they can drive through three feet of water and get washed downstream, some just take chances like the three people that though they could drive a backhoe into the creek to see how deep it was, or the two guys that thought they could canoe down the river until the hit a 12 foot dropoff. Arizona has a "stupid motorist" law, where if you ignore a flood barricade and need to be rescued, you pay for the cost of the rescue.

Anyway, it is unusal weather, but it isn't even a blip on the radar screen in comparison to what is going on in other parts of the world. We are inconvenienced, but still 99.99999% intact. Other towns in Asia aren't so lucky. We may lose power for a few hours or can't get to where we want to go for a while, but those poor souls have nothing left, no jobs, no family, no home. Then I think, we're not at all bad off and pray that someday these people will get some semblance of their life back.

 

[2-8-2]

Well, I survived the night and managed to catch some shut eye this morning. My place of employment shut its doors for the day because of the weather, so it isn't all bad.

Power flickered quite a bit through the night and went out 4 times, but never for longer than a few seconds. This house is only 2 years old, and a lot of the landscaping is now ruined. One small tree in the backyard gave up and snapped in half from the weight of the ice, and several others will have to be replaced.

Just a couple weeks ago, around Christmas, we had waist deep snow dumped on us within a few days and now this. Still, while it's a huge pain to deal with, it pales in comparison to the tsunami disaster. I just can't even imagine what they're going through. Keep them in our prayers.

 

[hudsonelectric]

Not so fun here in Connecticut, either. The state gets it in horizontal bands of intensity with the least snow and ice near the Long Island Sound coastline and the worst along the New York and Massachusetts state lines. Where I live we got a dinky snowfall, but the rain will more than likely freeze overnight making everything an iced up nightmare. :curse: I didn't snowblow this morning because of the low snowfall total, but I'm going to have to sand down whatever melted and refroze. The thing that gets me is that the daytime temperatures will climb high enough for everything to start melting again tomorrow. Oh, well...winter in New England, right?

 

[XavierJ123]

Been there, done that, a couple years back, right here in Kentucky when we had the February ice storm. Trees fell, limbs snapped sounding like explosions in the night. The power was out up to week in some places. We lost power for three days in our home and had to move in with the in-laws. Work shut down for three days. When we went home to inspect the house it was dark and cold. It didn't seem like a home anymore, just a cold house, uninhabitable. It took me all summer to clean up the broken tree debris in the yard. But that is nothing compared to those people whose experienced the tsunami and who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then there's " I Luv Aliya Aslam!" Ain't young love grand !

 

[N Gauger]

Best of Luck to all

 

[ausien]

Glad you made it through the night safely, I have a friend in the army med team in putek,and he says it is worse than you see in the meadia, he is suprised that there is anything left of the country, he visited a school there a few days ago and the children and teachers looked like half drowned rats, then five days later(when the water had receeded) they had built a platform to sleep on and the kids were laughing and playing, and the teachers and others were rebuilding the school building, that had been flattened to the foundations, he is amazed at the spirit of all the people there native and aid workers alike.... stay safe... and this time ..have a good one.. steve

 

[2-8-2]

Redux

Well...here I am on sump pump duty again. I fell asleep in my recliner (reading a copy of MRR I might add

) and woke up at 3:30am to the sound of running water. Sure enough, I had to run upstairs to wake my father up so we could get the backup going.

*SIGH* I need to take up coffee drinking. I'm getting too old for this crap.

 

[capt_turk]

It's bad here in Florida too! I had to turn down the airconditioner last night. It was either that or go get a blanket. lol
Ya'll stay warm up there!!

 

[ausien]

hang in there, it cant last forever, or can it...have a good noe..steve

 

[spitfire]

Isn't moving in with your parents supposed to make life easier?

Good for you for helping them out!! If you get really lonely down there, there's always theGauge chatroom.

Val