Winter storms -- Neighbors looking out for one another

[dado potato]

In about 2 hours my area will be hit by a snowstorm that will blow from 12/13 to 12/16, and deposit 8" to 12" of snow... With wind gusting to 45 mph, visibility will be extremely limited. It will be a "snow day" or two for schools. It will be like Vail CO without the slopes! <wink>


When the weather is ominous in this neck of the woods, people contact one another. Friends make sure friends are prepared to hunker down. This storm, "...this too", shall pass.

[catherine]

Stay safe, dado! I'm glad you have caring neighbors.

Don't send the storm my way, please.

[Alan]

We've been camping on a lake in a Corps Of Engineers campground just outside Shreveport LA for the past week. We've spent the past 4 hours in our travel trailer watching tornadoes reported all around us, wondering if we'll be affected. Most of the storms have passed us by but there's still one cell left just to our immediate southwest travelling northeast, hopefully our camper will still be intact once it passes over.

A local good ole boy in a Jeep stopped by an hour or so ago letting us know his phone number in case we needed anything later and offered us some of the freshly caught fish he'd harvested from the lake this morning. I guess that's the sort of thing they do in the southern version of a winter storm.

[iris lilies]

Ugh, tornadoes without a basement! Be safe.

[Tradd]

Stay safe, Dado.

Alan, that’s great to hear.

[frugal-one]

Here’s wishing you both remain safe.

[happystuff]

Stay safe, dado, Alan and everyone in these paths!

[Teacher Terry]

Yesterday it was supposed to rain all day but it quickly turned into a lot of snow. I lost my internet and only have partial power. The building must be on 2 different transformers because everyone here has the same issue. So I have no heat but luckily a space heater that I used with an extension cord. Being condos stacked up they retain heat better than a house. Power estimated to be on tonight at 6pm which is more than 24 hours and internet no clue which means also no tv.

The good thing about partial power is you can use extension cords to keep important things like your refrigerator going. I had plans for yesterday evening but between the roads not being good and not leaving the dogs alone with no heat happy new year:)). Good thing I have the space heater because I doubt I could find a hotel room during holiday time here.

[jp1]

Yesterday it was supposed to rain all day but it quickly turned into a lot of snow. I lost my internet and only have partial power. The building must be on 2 different transformers because everyone here has the same issue. So I have no heat but luckily a space heater that I used with an extension cord.

When my parents lived in a 40 unit condo building this happened to them often during storms. I’m not an electrical expert but this sounds like a ‘lost phase.’ Basically the electricity for the 240 circuits (dryer, even, larger air conditioning units) comes in to the building over two wires. The 120 circuits get their power from one or the other of the wires. If you look at your electric panel and compare the dead circuits to the still working circuits it will be every other circuit. If you have any 240v circuits like a stove you should turn those circuits off (these circuit breakers are typically ‘double’ ) when this type of power outage happens to prevent power from bleeding into the dead phase circuits and potentially damaging any chips in appliances on those circuits.

[Teacher Terry]

Thanks for the tip JP. Wee didn’t get electricity back yesterday and now they are saying 4 pm today. 40k lost power so they have a big job. They are saying some won’t have it until tomorrow. My friend lived here 4 years and said it only happened once before. Of course this much heavy snow at once is unusual for us.

[jp1]

How much snow did you get? We got 4.7 inches of rain from that storm and they are saying that the one coming Wednesday is going to be quite a bit more.

[Teacher Terry]

JP, I live right in town and got 6 inches. People that were higher up got a foot and more. I looked at my electrical panel and can’t turn off my stove without turning off the refrigerator so just have to hope that when the power comes on it doesn’t ruin the chip in my fairly new stove. Every day they promise us power the next day and keep pushing it out. It happened Saturday afternoon. So living in my bedroom with the space heater.

[iris lilies]

Ya’ll are getting our midwest snowstorms. We got less than an inch with the last winter storm although the cold was extreme for around these parts.

[Teacher Terry]

Finally got power at 11 am. Funny how a wealthy subdivision got there’s back in 7 hours. I know facilities have priority, etc but interesting that they didn’t restore people that had been out the longest first. My neighborhood is mixed with some very expensive homes, condos that are average and then some fairly crappy apartments. It’s an older neighborhood so really a mixture.

[jp1]

Does your utility have a posted plan for if they need to do rolling blackouts to prevent grid failure? Ours does. So anyone can look up any address to see if ‘critical infrastructure’ is on their chink of the grid. Apparently our house is in one of those sections (probably because of the fire station 1.5 miles from us) so we would likely be among the first restored if we ever have an outage.

[Teacher Terry]

JP, I don’t know the answer. I do know Reno hasn’t needed to do rolling blackouts.

[ThetisIslander]

We got about 18 inches in two days around Christmas. Had to postpone travel (the hermit and me viewed it as a Christmas present). Snow is gone and the rain is here now. Expecting a wind storm tonight.