Wicked Wind

Ah, a night of having no power again. Why is it that everytime we lose power it's at each of the far extremes in weather? Last summer it was in the middle of the night with smoltering heat. Last night we had a rude awakening at 2am when the temperature is 12 degrees with a wind chill of -11 degrees and the winds a howling. We're not talking a little wind. We're talking wicked wind. The kind that freezes your face off and knocks you off of your feet.

The electric flickered at 12am and we had no issues. Then at 2am there was a loud crack and glowing lights sparking outside our window. We ran to the window and looked out the blinds to find our neighbors tree had split and was lying in the street. At the same time it was pulling on powerlines and with every gust of wind there were sparks and green light. Everytime there were sparks we lost our power. After a minute the powerline must have totally gave way because it stopped sparking and we lost complete power. Unsure what to do we called 911. I know the electric company asks you to call a specific number but come on, are you going to go searching through your file cabinet to find the number at 2am in the pitch dark? Of course we were worried about our power but we wanted to make sure that the live wire would be addressed. After 15 minutes a police officer showed. I can only hope that if it were a more serious incident they'd be there faster. Dunno though. Hopefully I'll never have to find out. The police left and within an hour a crew had arrived. I'm figuring they just assessed the damage and put up barricades because as of this moment we still have downed powerlines, a tree in the middle of the street, and no power. We did get more sleep than expected. Of course I was up mostly thinking through how to get ready in the morning and taking the animals elsewhere with having no power and no heat. Just piecing it all together. Thankfully I don't go into work until noon today. However, I still woke up with David at 6am and am currently with the dogs at the 'rents house. I debated whether to take the cats to work for comfort but as of now they seem content in our 60 degree house. I'll check on them in a bit.

This weather is a far cry from yesterdays. With all of the wicked wind and freezing temperatures the local schools have been cancelled for the day. My only guess is that we're not the only ones without power, with the possibility of other downed trees and powerlines. However, our neighbors less than a block away have power. We must be in a different grid or something. I can only hope that we'll have power by the afternoon. Cross your fingers.

Update: Upon checking back at the house at 9am we still didn't have power and the temperature in the house was down to 56 degrees. When I checked back at 11am we had power and the temperature was slowly increasing. As of this point (8pm) we are finally back up to temperature. Here's a picture of the tree that fell. Really, the picture doesn't do justice as it's too dark and you can't see half of the tree. But given that it was 6am and blistery cold it's the best I could do.