A little before midnight I heard the first crash. A peak out the windows showed something might be on fire, but it was hard to tell. The wind was blowing so hard it sounded like the siding was being pulled off the house - we later discovered it was our empty recycling bin that had been pushed about 10 feet, sideways, and into the side of the house. Then came the big flash of light, followed by a loud crash, and darkness.
Kilowatt grabbed an industrial strength flashlight (where does he buy this stuff?) and stepped out onto the front porch. Lying across the middle of the street were the power lines that service our house. I dutifully called to report the downed power lines blocking the roadway. We tried to get some sleep with the constant wind gusts. At 3AM the chainsaws started - turns out there was also a tree blocking the road that the flashlight couldn't quite illuminate. Here's the view the next morning:
The trees took out our power lines, and our cable too. We have a generator, so losing the cable (broadband Internet access) was actually worse than losing electricity! At lunch we headed out in search of warm food and free WiFi. We noticed a lot of trees uprooted just like this one in our neighbor's yard:
After this, I realized I need to add a few items to my shopping list for winter weather survival:
1) Generac generator - no electricity - make your own
2) 5 gallon gas cans - because you have to have something to run that generator
3) Weber grill - because that generator won't run a stove or microwave AND your furnace.
4) Poland Springs bottled water - unless you are lucky enough to be on city water (we are!)
5) Smartphone - so when your cable goes out, you can still get news from Twitter
6) Small TV set, DVD player, and DVD's - so you can respond to "Mom, I'm bored..."
At the moment, cable is back, and we are running on hour 70 of so of generator power. But here's the view outside my front door:
So maybe we won't hit hour 80!
