Power outages

At low temperatures here, where the trees split form having completely frozen over, roads are down, no hydro, no electricity, I'm enjoying my little collection of candles by the kitchen table for warmth and light. News says that power will probably not be restored for another three days. I've resorted to sticking meat and fish in our window sills as fridges (I live in a building). The laptop is my last ditch effort for charging devices because I don't feel like wrestling for some public power outlets.

Little by little the power around is coming back on, but our little residential area is far from top priority. It's actually kind of pretty, where the trees are completely frozen over with ice.

Most of the public transport is down as well in Toronto because our light rail transit system is frailer than a couple of wooden skewers. I'm trying to finish the food in the fridge ASAP, but I don't want to risk a stomachs ache. Hope everyone else's Christmas weeks are relatively better.

Driving home tonight there was a "train" of utility trucks on the mass pike (like, 30 of them) just west of exit 3. The temp leaving Boston was a very damp and chilly 37 and the temp in NYC was 70.... Not sure why they were headed west on the mass pike--maybe they were on their way back from fixing power in Vermont. Dunno.

Power outages make me wish I had my GBA with doom and full batteries in it. I havent had a power outage since ive moved out, not even during hurricane sandy, when most peoples were out for almost a week

i really should have some kinda emergency entertainment kit to leave in the closet in case it does happen. I dont think a box of apples to apples will cut it. Maybe I could come up with a way to draw doom levels on paper thats actually fun, maybe with colored pencils and maybe with a printed out reference book of all dooms textures, flats, line actions, sector effects, etc.

Lol. I live in Florida. The high today and tomorrow is in the 80s.

I'm glad for once that I don't live up north where the landscape is much more beautiful.

BloodyAcid said:
(I live in a building)

Good thing! If you lived in the street you'd in a bit of a problem there...

Over here in Buenos Aires there have been some localized blackouts due to the heat, but I wasn't really affected. They apparently happen because parts of the unupdated energy infrastructure within the city can't take the demand.

All of San Diego county lost power in 2011 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Southwest_blackout). A power company employee in a substation in Arizona zigged when he should have zagged, and about 3 million people went dark for about 12 hours.

12 hours is nothing compared to having power out for a few days in the winter, but around here, it's like when it rains, people just don't know how to cope.

During the day, it was probably 85-90F (30-33C), and when it's that warm during the day for a long period of time, most houses just become hotboxes at night, it's almost impossible to sleep without fans or A/C, both of which require power.

Power dropped at 3:30pm in the afternoon, and didn't come back on for me until 12:30am.

I was at work when the power cut out. There was a huge line of cars trying to get on to the freeway near where I work, I think the line was about 2 or 3 miles long. People get into intersections when the power is out, and then they get stuck there, because the people ahead of them get stuck and everybody stops moving. I usually ride my motorcycle to work; there's a special carpool lane to get on the freeway near where I work, so when I left work, I was able to boogie up to the carpool entrance, it's in the opposite direction from the normal non-carpool freeway onramp. It only took me 5 minutes to get on the freeway, and I was home within about 20 minutes.

After I got home, the UPS on my computer lasted about 2-2.5 hours or so, then I shut down all of my computer equipment and went hiking up into the hills above my house. I wanted to see and take pictures of the area in between the hill behind my house, and the Pacific Ocean, about 7 miles/~12 kilometers to the west of me. Usually, at dusk and at night, it's very bright, lots of street lamps, houses, and stoplights. That night, all I could see were the headlights of the cars on the freeway. Here's one of the pix I took. The lights you see in the picture are cars on Interstate 56 in San Diego County, heading eastbound, and a few cars on surface streets. The Pacific Ocean is visible in the background, below the line of the horizon, but above the hills. There's probably about 20,000-30,000 people who live in the frame of this picture, and they were all dark when I took it.



After I got home from hiking in the hills, I went swimming, the condo complex I live in has a common pool. I was the only person who thought of going swimming that evening/night. As warm as it was, nobody else wanted to cool off in the pool, so I had the place to myself. It was nice being able to look up and see stars and the moon for once, instead of seeing the light pollution from the city. Everything was super bright, it was nice.

The best part was, my water heater still had moderately hot water after I got home from the pool, so I was able to get a hot shower after swimming, then crashed out until the power got switched on at 12:30am.

It sucks that you have no power, but it sounds like you're coping with it fine. I hope you get power back soon.

I lived through the 2003 Italy blackout. It occured during the night, but it was kind of surreal seeing no electric lights other than those from cars.

Just came from a 26-hour blackout here in Southern Ontario. Was fun.

40oz said:

Power outages make me wish I had my GBA with doom and full batteries in it. I havent had a power outage since ive moved out, not even during hurricane sandy, when most peoples were out for almost a week

Ha I thought I was the only person that bought Doom. Never could find a copy of Doom 2.

As for anyone else with power outtages, hope ya'all have wood and matches. Newspaper for kindling, that sort of thing. There are instant hand warmer bags too you can buy if you don't have a fireplace. Stay inside, wear lots of layers, the tighter the clothes, the less cold gets trapped between you and the layers. And well if all else fails, stay somewhere else overnight so you don't freeze.

No weather problems in Santiago the last week. Warm, dry with clear skies. 80s-90s in the day, and 60s by night. On Saturday it was mid-80s even quite high in the mountains (c. 9000 feet).

Back in Minnesota now, and nothing dramatic either. About zero and light on-and-off snow. Expected to get colder later today. Not a good day to lick any outdoor metal items, but otherwise no problems. Might visit the local ski hill. No word of any power outages on the local news.

40oz said:

i really should have some kinda emergency entertainment kit to leave in the closet in case it does happen.

Definitely need to replace that with Cards Against Humanity.

I can't remember Edmonton suffering a blackout in recent memory. It could happen. It's not like we buried all the lines coming from the power plants out in the sticks, and we do get tornadoes here.

We're luckier in newer neighbourhoods in the city, though. Most of the lines are buried and we have a much drier climate than in Ontario. When our power goes out it's usually because some fool drove his truck into one of those boxes on a street corner or something. The power goes out over a few blocks and is restored within a couple hours.

Revved said:

Just came from a 26-hour blackout here in Southern Ontario. Was fun.

I filled several large containers of water for nothing. Well, not really for nothing. Power restored, hopefully to stay, at least until -18 Celsius (-0.4F for American folks) weather leaves.

The worst blackout I've been a part of was when remnants of Ike came through the area and knocked out the power for 9 days in September 2008. At first, it was just another power outage until it didn't come back the next day...or the next...or the next. Luckily, my brother got his power back relatively quickly so I'd go over to his house so I could use the Internet and do my school stuff if necessary since I still had school to worry about at that time. Our neighborhood usually gets the shaft when it comes to power outages because our power grid is weird and a bit isolated from the more densely-populated neighborhoods throughout the area, making us low priority.

We had a little storm a few weeks ago. Some trees came down and took the power out and blocked one of the routes near where I live. One of the trees hit my house at 6.40 a.m. but it only did minimal damage (ripped some guttering off). I think the power was out for about 11 hours but I was at work for most of that time.

Funny thing is, it happened a week or so after the "big storm" threatening the South of England that everyone got so worked up about. The winds and weather here were much the same as was experienced in the South but far less fuss was made and I don't even think it made the national news. I mention this simply because it validates the comment that I made in the other thread:

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/everything-else/66005-attention-all-ye-englanders-for-a-great-storm-approaches/

Enjay said:

Meh, it all depends what you are used to. I'm not saying that it will be nice weather but a storm like that isn't even so unusual further north in the UK and other parts of the world regularly have far worse.

Enjay said:

I'm merely saying that a storm of this (predicted) magnitude is actually not that special in many places (even places not too far from the south of England) and, in those places, would be the kind of weather that would be experienced a number of times a year without causing any great consternation.

The thing is, "usual climate" determines everything. In places where the winds hardly ever blow strongly, you can get away with building stuff out of cheap but frail materials. If it hardly ever rains and nearly never snow, you can get away with flat roofs, much easier to build.

Now put a meter of snow on a flat roof: tada, you have a building that crumbles down and crushes everybody inside. Yay. A strong storm on a quiet place? Every house and trees and stuff gets torn out of the ground. Never seen rains like that before? Everything's flooded.

Sure in some other places, there is snow like that all the time, and roofs are built at a very steep angle so that it doesn't accumulate and create unbearable pressure on the structure. The walls are sturdy and securely anchored in a strong concrete foundation. A numbers of trenches, canals, and drainage tunnels -- disconnected from the sewer system -- allow to channel the rainwater away before it floods. People are used to it, and they built stuff in consequence.

But the same is true for everything. Dryer than usual? Might be a problem for crops, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem, right? Wrong, it can change the physical properties of the soil, which can lead to buildings shifting and crumbling. Wetter than usual? Same. Warmer? Ditto, especially in a cold country where this might lead to unusual thawing of ice and snow and permafrost.

Had a one hour outage last week, which was little more than a nuisance. Spent the next half hour re-programming an assortment of appliances with built-in clocks but no battery backup system, a couple of them don't even retain station presets.

That's a beautiful pic. Hope the weather isn't too bad for the OP; how do you get heat?

Not even snow; everything was crystal clear ice. The storm moved up and now it's affecting about 130,000 people up north.

http://i.imgur.com/sdOY5FL.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/OUoi8Se.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ou2DPRj.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/l8r2Vsg.jpg