I don't know how the pioneers did it...

[DoYouKubuntu]

It *SUCKS* being without power--especially for five, count 'em, FIVE days. WTF is she talking about?, you're asking. The power went out here in the beautiful San Gabriel Valley due to an enormous windstorm, and we waited pati...okay, NOT so patiently...for it to be restored. Here in my part of Arcadia it went out Wednesday--and wasn't restored until this morning. >

Do you have any idea what a techno-freak-geek like me goes through without her plethora of computers, TVs, and smartphone? I used my laptop [the one with a good battery] sparingly--of course, there was no Internet connection--and charged my phone via its USB cable to the laptop. But eventually both of their batteries died. I'm glad I have a charger for my phone in my car; I finally used it yesterday to charge the phone [partially]. Going to SoCal Edison's web site was an exercise in futility. It was basically, yep, you're without power!, and we have no idea when it'll be fixed.

I told my mom "if I wanted to live where the power goes out for days due to the weather, I'd have stayed in Dallas!" This isn't supposed to happen HERE. I grew up here. My mother's been here since 1939. All my relatives in Pasadena and Sierra Madre were also without power. This was a first for all of us. Now, in Dallas, on the other hand, the power would go out so often I just kind of got used to it. And there, the howling winds were accompanied by rain coming down like waterfalls. They don't call it Tornado Alley for nothing. But even so, the longest I ever went without power there was 6 or 7 days after a particularly bad ice storm. I never expected to go 5 days HERE without power due to the weather.

Okay, I'm done bitching for now.

[oshunluvr]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Okay, I'm done bitching for now.

I'm glad you admitted FOR now.... lol

We were lucky down here - the wind missed us almost completely. I think the San Pedro hill blocks most of the bad weather for us. The best power outage back up is an RV! Fire up the genset and watch a movie while cruising the internet and warming a microwave dinner... lol

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Yep, for now.

I'm so glad we have gas appliances. The heater and water heater worked without issue, and the range was usable by lighting its burners with a match. But it's so weird not having things you just take for granted, like the microwave, can opener and coffee maker, available. THANK GOODNESS my mother has a percolator--you know, the kind of coffee pot you didn't need electricity for! I told my neighbor Thursday morning [when we were both outside surveying the damage] that things were going to get VERY cranky around this house if we didn't have our morning coffee. Luckily, thanks to the percolator, that didn't materialize.

My cousin in the OTHER valley was completely unaffected by the outage, but everyone else in my family went without power for varying numbers of days.

There's a huge tree next door that snapped in half Wednesday night. And several of the trees across the street, on the lot that just had its house torn down, also snapped. Kind of ironic that that happened the same day they razed the house.

[GreyGeek]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

June 3rd, 1980.

I had just delivered 15 Apple laptops to the Hastings JR High School and was returning back to Grand Island, NE, where I lived. My son had come with me so he could help and gain some useful experience. On the way back, while driving up what was later named the "Tom Osborn Highway", we saw a little black ball of a cloud in the sky over GI. If you held a pea at arms length it would cover that ball. What stood out about it was that it was perfectly round and very black, like a black pearl.

The day was hot and humid, and thunderstorms were predicted. It was about 5:30PM as we drove north. In the 20-30 minutes it took to drive from Hasting to GI that little black cloud shot a column almost straight up, like the exhaust of the Atlas V that launched this week. It then peaked out at what we later learned was over 70,000 feet and then arched over into the classic anvil shape as the column and the base of the cloud expanded outward, horizontally, equally as fast. When my son and I arrived at the edge of town a dark black heavy cloud hung over it, with the base probably no more than 750-1000 feet high, covered with mamattus clouds that looked exactly like this:
[img width=400 height=300]http://ubuntuone.com/2g2ariVVaknOrtmUqpkd42[/img]

Fifteen minutes after my son and I arrived home the tornado sirens went off. TV reports put a tornado on the ground about 4 blocks west of our house. My son and I went out on the lawn and watched a second black anvil descend to the ground about 1,000 feet away. Overhead, about 200' up and higher, the sky was filled with debris circling the second touchdown point, but it was calm where we were standing. As we watched and talked the tornado moved south, shaking the ground as it went. It heavily damaged the VA hospital. When my son and I talked about it our voices vibrated as pressure waves thumped us. It was exactly like trying to talk while you pound your chest. When stuff started falling around us we retired to our tornado shelter.

There were 7 (SEVEN) tornadoes that night, the big one which traveled down South Locus St was an F5. We were without phone, power or water for five days. My wife, who was visiting a friend in a town 30 miles could not get us by phone and thought the worse as she watch TV reports at her friend's house about how close one of the tornadoes came to our house. The next day, she got up very early and arrived at home just minutes before the National Guard blockaded the town, at 6 AM, and prevented anyone but emergency people and supplies from entering for the next week. Trees were down everywhere. You couldn't drive. My son and I spent the next couple days walking around town looking at the damage.

The assistant principal at the JR HS where I installed the Apples also lived in GI. He was following us down the highway and apparently stopped off at a bar and grill on South Locus st, the Pagoda Inn, IIRC. When the siren went off the manager and the patrons hide in the walk-in cooler. They survived without a scratch. Ron decided to sit at the bar and drink his way through the storm. They pulled his body from the rubble a couple days later, a block away. It looked like something had deposited at box (the cooler) in the middle of a paved parking lot. In fact, for several blocks in all directions not a tree or a building survived. The trees looked like shattered fence posts. and all along So. Locus St. there were concrete pads with nothing on them where, a couple days before, stood giant retailer and box store buildings.

[woodsmoke]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

I can completely commiserate with your problems but you are at distinct disadvantage compared to the midwest.

We regularly experience four seasons, instead of your ONE !!

And because of that we normally have ice storms during the winter and experience outages as a matter of living on the old world.

A few years ago the whole of the area was without power for fourteen(14) days and that in the middle of an ice storm.

So... we kick back with a good book, some nice wine or coffee and, since the area uses natural gas for this precise reason, we were quite warm, except for folks in rentals which almost all use electricity.

What was really curious about that particular ice storm is the number of semi-tractor trailers that appeared magically as if out of nowhere with huge numbers of "supposedly" re-conditioned gas powered electric generators! I mean, literally thousands of generators appeared and were for sale for incredibly low prices. AND they were not reconditioned, they were new in the boxes.

Through a rather devious pathway I learned that this was one of the programs started by Bush 2 as part of the crisis management system for homeland security after 9-11. According to the information I gleaned the government, and continued under Obama, has been quietly having untold thousands of the generators made and pre-positioned, while providing some kind of "tax write-off" to the company(ies) who then sell them out to ...people... who then charge a small amount so that it doesn't look like the big bad gubbmint is "taking over".

The thing that made me suspicious at first was that I went to purchase one of them, they were being sold out of the back of a semi at an intersection in the middle of the storm, the local media showed up and the guy basically told them this was a private operation and to shove off or get shoved off and they....left....not a single word in the news... not, one word....,amazing how compliant the media is nowadays...except for the constant barrages about the Kardasians...

Again, I can commiserate!

woodsmoke

[dibl]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Here is what I did on February 1 of this year, when we had our bi-weekly power outtage:

[img width=400 height=300]http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/3748/candlefire.png[/img]

practiced my low-light photography technique.

[dibl]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Speaking of Midwest weather disasters, here's the 25 May 2011 hailstorm that not only took out the power, but also ruined every roof within 3 miles of my house, and any siding except brick and hardwood. I lost 6 windows and a bunch of screens, as well as my roof, gutters, and vinyl siding. (A "silver lining" -- I never liked the color of this house, so now State Farm is helping me change it. )

Luckily we had both cars in the garage at the time -- lots of folks around here are still driving dimpled cars from that storm.

[img width=400 height=300]http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/2128/l1060549.jpg[/img]

[woodsmoke]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

tres kewl photo of the fireplace dlbl, you really should upload it to KDElook.

woodsmoke

[dibl]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Hey thanks Woody -- you are right, I hadn't thought of it that way. Nice dark "theme". Maybe I will upload it.

[DoYouKubuntu]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Fascinating story, GreyGeek. Thanks for sharing. After living in Florida and Dallas, and therefore experiencing both hurricanes and tornadoes, respectively, I totally get what you're talking about. The sound of tornado sirens going off in my North Dallas neighborhood was creepy and welcome at the same time. We were really lucky that we never had a house flattened, or even seriously damaged, by a tornado; the closest that one ever touched down was about half a mile away, and it destroyed numerous houses. Our worst damage ever was to the roof, which had to be replaced. There's something so awesome--in a scary way--about the daytime sky suddenly turning black, and everything going silent and still, and then all of a sudden it's like the world is coming to an end. Do I need to reiterate how glad I am to be back home in California? Sure, we have the constant threat of earthquakes, but I grew up with them and would gladly pick them over hurricanes and tornadoes any day of the week. When "the [pretty] big one" hit in early 1971, the Sylmar quake, my uncle [a physician] had stayed home that day because of a cold; this was very unlike him, but he did. His hospital, Olive View, was destroyed when the quake hit, and he knew at least one person who died there. There is one thing I prefer about tornadoes/hurricanes over earthquakes, and that's the advance warning you get! With hurricanes you have days to get prepared, with tornadoes you may have hours or at least minutes, but with earthquakes, BOOM!, they're there and that's all there is to it.

I can completely commiserate with your problems but you are at distinct disadvantage compared to the midwest.

We regularly experience four seasons, instead of your ONE !!

Hey, we have four seasons, too! They're just all very...similar. I laugh my ass off every time I hear anyone complain about how COLD it is, or how hot and HUMID it is...please! Give me a break. I've taken screenshots of my weather applet and sent them to my best friend [who's currently in North Carolina] to show her the reality vs how people around here perceive the weather, especially the hot/humid thing. Sorry, but when you've lived in Dallas--where the summer temps are 100+ for days, or weeks, at a time, combined with 90+% humidity, um, 85 degrees and 13% humidity just don't qualify as HOT AND HUMID. And after living through ice storms and single digit temperatures in Dallas, 65 doesn't qualify as COLD.

And because of that we normally have ice storms during the winter and experience outages as a matter of living on the old world.

A few years ago the whole of the area was without power for fourteen(14) days and that in the middle of an ice storm.

Oh my goodness...I thought my 6 or 7 (I can't recall any more which it was) days without power, with the high temps in the 20s, was awful. It WAS bad, because none of our appliances worked, even though they were gas; they all required electricity to start. But still, 14 days...wow.

What was really curious about that particular ice storm is the number of semi-tractor trailers that appeared magically as if out of nowhere with huge numbers of "supposedly" re-conditioned gas powered electric generators! I mean, literally thousands of generators appeared and were for sale for incredibly low prices. AND they were not reconditioned, they were new in the boxes.

Through a rather devious pathway I learned that this was one of the programs started by Bush 2 as part of the crisis management system for homeland security after 9-11. According to the information I gleaned the government, and continued under Obama, has been quietly having untold thousands of the generators made and pre-positioned, while providing some kind of "tax write-off" to the company(ies) who then sell them out to ...people... who then charge a small amount so that it doesn't look like the big bad gubbmint is "taking over".

The thing that made me suspicious at first was that I went to purchase one of them, they were being sold out of the back of a semi at an intersection in the middle of the storm, the local media showed up and the guy basically told them this was a private operation and to shove off or get shoved off and they....left....not a single word in the news... not, one word....,amazing how compliant the media is nowadays...

Very interesting.

except for the constant barrages about the Kardasians...

Oh, no, don't get me started on the Kardashians...or any of the other so-called celebrities who are famous for being famous.

[oshunluvr]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Southern California's four seasons: Drought, Fire, Earthquake, Mudslide

[Snowhog]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Southern California's four seasons: Drought, Fire, Earthquake, Mudslide

That is hilarious!! However, there is a more devastating 'fifth' season that affects all of California -- Election Season.

[vinnywright]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

thanks @dibl





VINNY

[dibl]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Kewl! -- little extra benefit from being a KFN member, eh?

I would be happy to e-mail the original 2560x1920 jpeg image if you want it.

[vinnywright]

Re: I don't know how the pioneers did it...

Kewl! -- little extra benefit from being a KFN member, eh?

yes it is ......

I would be happy to e-mail the original 2560x1920 jpeg image if you want it.

OK sure beter resolution

charles[dot]v[dot]wright[at]gmail[dot]com

VINNY