We had a night of howling window-rattling, but that was the worst of it. We dropped from 4°C to -12°C overnight and acquired a thin layer of snow — hard to tell how much because the wind scoured it off of exposed surfaces. We are on the northern edge of the big storm that ripped through the midwest, so we still have power and all that good stuff — Iowa, SE Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan suffered far worse.
So, I selfishly wonder, will my flies arrive safely at the lab today? That’s the real test.
Power was out for over an hour in Wheaton, IL where I am. It was in the middle of doing an MMO with friends. I missed out on half a raid and an online interview I wanted to watch on YouTube that was after that. But given how the first estimate said the power would have been off until midnight, I think I got off light. (I also got the rewards for the raid despite missing part of it.)
Northeast Iowa reporting in. The power flickered out for a moment but came right back on. Lost a fairly large branch (10 to 12 inch) on an old hackberry tree. It’s still attached by a sliver to the trunk about 10ft off the ground and supported on the other end by the house.
Called a tree guy and the insurance company. They are both really busy today for some reason.
I’m in Galesville, Wisconsin; 20 miles east of Winona, Minnesota (if that helps). The sirens went off at about 8:00 last night, and we went down to the basement. About ten minutes later, lots of lightning flashes started. Then really buffeting winds. At 8:23, the power went out. It tried to come back on four times in the next couple of hours, but stayed off for 13. A big section of a maple tree in our yard fell across the street, blocking it. The city workers have already come and cleared the part that was on the road. The rest is ours to deal with (I might make some stuff from the wood, but not until spring). The rest of the tree will have to come down, too; again, in the spring.
The wind howled for most of the night. I went outside at 4:00, and it just seemed to be coming from every direction. With the power out, I could not see much, though a big gibbous moon was above the clouds, providing a little illumination. The low, constant howling was coming from the wind blowing through all the bare trees, the tall white pines (we have two), and from the guy wires that hold up the huge transmission tower for a local TV station. It’s about half a mile away, and my son once used maps to figure out that, if it fell in a straight collapse (which it wouldn’t) toward our house, it would miss it by only a hundred feet or so. It’s very tall, and the wind through the wires is pretty constant. But last night, it sang.
Over here in merrie England ,anything more than a light dusting of snow ,and a gentle breeze and the whole country comes to a grinding halt ,I jest yea not.
@3 Well named ,where you live .Anyone else think that the power companies restore the power ,then wait a few minutes while we all blow out the candles and turn off the torches ,and try and pick up where we were ,then the bastards turn the power off again ?
Talking of Bill Bryson ,(well someone somewhere must be talking about him) I am reading his book “The Road to Little Dribbling “,in it he mentions visiting Derwent Dam ,where the Dam Busters practiced .
He states that only one dam was breached ,where in fact two dams were breached.
Don’t wish to be a bother ,but can I complain to the American embassy about him ?
@Alverant ..nearly next door in Clarendon Hills, IL we had a couple power dips but no outages. I didn’t even see any branches down this morning, but the neighboring town had some issues with the Trash cans/items they put out last night.
A nice transient voltage dip is a great way to test the quality of your electrical equipment though.
One of two running PCs.. the one with the larger PowerSupply.. had big enough capacitors to ride out the dips with no issues. The other may have too, but it required some more attention this morning, though that might have been un-related.
TV and, surprisingly, a very under-taxed AV Receiver reset during our brown-outs. I would have expected the Receiver to have a beefy enough power supply to ride up the dips.. considering we couldn’t have been using more than 1/10th of its output capacity. Yet.. My cheap cable box/PVR rode the power dips without issue.