Outdoors

So here's how my last few of days have been.

Monday

5:00AM: Alarm rings. I have to be in at work by 6. Our multi-year ERP switchover project goes live today, and we have to be there to make sure it all works.

5:45AM: I go outside and realize that the winter weather advisory really meant it this time. It's always great to end the holidays with having to go in to work early, during freezing rain, in the dark.

Daytime: The ERP switchover goes relatively smoothly, thankfully. The rain quits for awhile, and thankfully the ground proved to be warm enough that it wasn't sticking.

Evening: For the first time in at least 10 years, I inexplicably forget to set the alarm clock. Also, it starts raining again.

Tuesday

9:30AM: Phone rings. Awake to realize I should have been awake at 7. Frantic hurrying to get to work. It's still raining, and this time the ground is cooler. I drive slowly to work.

Noon: Most people don't go out to lunch because 1) it is raining outside, 2) it is freezing outside, and 3) their cars are covered with a sheet of ice.

(Some of these next times are estimates.)

1:30PM: Power goes off at work. We toil around for a bit, waiting to see if it comes back on. It doesn't, so we start shutting down the servers. We have UPS backup, but no generator for our servers. We get a couple of inevitable "why can't I log in" calls. (Our plant 2, half a mile away, somehow did have power.)

2:00PM: My wife calls to let me know that she just got a call from our neighbors across the road. (That means they're about half a mile away; we can't see any of our neighbors from our house.) They were just calling to let us know that a tree was on fire (due to power lines) at our other neighbors house. But they had to hang up abruptly, because there was a loud crash, and they had to make sure the tree didn't fall through their roof. (It was OK.) I tell my wife to run some water so we have some if the power goes out here.

Read on for more...


3:00PM: It's clear that power isn't coming back on at work, so people are sent home for the day. I discover that my car's ice scraper is missing, and also that my parking space turned out to be in the middle of 2" of water. With wet feet, I borrow someone's scraper. Also, I learn that the power at our house just went off. Great.

3:15PM: I get to our driveway, but I don't stop to get the mail. Our mailbox appears to be frozen shut, and I'm cold, so I don't want to go outside.

3:16PM: I get about 2/3 of the way down our driveway, then have to drive in the (thankfully still passable) ditch because two branches are down over the road.

3:16:30PM: I notice that there's a third branch down, so there's no way to drive around this one. Also, it's on the ground but still attached to the tree. So I leave the car there, then run the rest of the way to the garage. Our driveway is about 1/3 mile long, so that's not just a 10-second run. Of course, the garage door opener doesn't work since there's no power. So I have to go in the side door and feel my way around the dark garage so I can release the door manually from the inside. Then I grab the tree trimmer and return to the car and clear the branches, then I pull the car in. As I stand outside, I hear creaking, snapping, and popping from every direction.

3:30PM: After checking on the cat's food and water supply, and making sure he has enough blankets for the night (he's an outdoor cat but gets to use half of our garage at night or when the weather is bad), I finally get inside. It's still about 60F indoors. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have no electricity. That means that we also have no heat (electricity powers our furnace blower) and no water (electricity powers our pump). We gather up the candles, kerosene lamp, flashlights, etc.

3:45PM: I'm standing by our kitchen sink and watch a medium-size branch crash down over our walkway.

4:00PM: I decide to take some photos from our windows and porch. It's still raning, so I don't go outdoors. I can't post them yet because our power is still off, but I will.

5:15PM: We go to investigate the crash we heard from the front yard. A huge branch crashed to the ground just a few feet in front of our house. It looks like it probably scraped our house, but it will likely only require some painting to fix it up. Phew.

5:30PM: We start getting hungry. Our stove is propane-powered, and the burners work without electricity if I light them with a match. I do so, and we warm up some leftovers. I hold the lamp while my wife stirs. We feel like it's 70 years ago.

6:30PM: Boredom.

7:30PM: We start listening to the radio and finding out the magnitude of what's going on. Our power may be out awhile. They're saying maybe a week and a half.

8:20PM: We can't see any neighbors from our house, but we can see the faint glow of lights from town on the horizon. I call the neighbors to see if it's just the line to our house that's out, or if their power is out too. It's not just us.

9:00PM: I decide that I ought to post about this. My laptop still has power, and one of our UPS units had nothing to do because the computer hooked up to it was off. I turn on the laptop, hook the DSL modem straight into it, and plug the DSL modem in to the UPS to blog. I press power on the UPS. It just beeps at me. It had plenty of power when I turnd it off before. (Note to self: never buy an "intelligent" CyberPower product again.)

9:15PM: I dial up with a modem to make a post in the midst of the icy power failure.

That's dedication.

9:16PM: My attempt to post finally fails becuase the auth server appears to be unreachable. I know of no other numbers for ISPs without dialing up. Sigh.


Overnight: Cold. There's a tree limb on our roof, and it's windy. It keeps rolling around, waking me up. That's OK, because I'm trying to figure out if I should go in to work Wednesday. Eventually, it seems that work is still without power. By morning, temperatures are in the upper 40s indoors.

Wednesday

We have several major concerns. The high for Wednesday was 21F and that was at 12:05AM. Temperatures are supposed to fall to about 2F throughout the day.

This means that our well house will likely freeze. That's bad, because it will probably burst the piping in there and damage the pressure tank and switch.

Also, plumbing in the old part of our house will be at risk; it's now in the 30s over there.

And, our outdoor cat should have some heat.

After some thinking, I decide that we should go to the Coleman Factory Outlet in Wichita to get some propane-powered camping heaters.

9:15AM: We leave for Wichita. It normally takes about 45 minutes to get to the Coleman store.

10:45AM or so: We arrive at the Coleman store. They are sold out of propane, almost sold out of the Coleman "white gas", but have a number of heaters left. In fact, they have set out a huge pile. We buy one SportCat for our wellhouse and two BlackCat heaters; one for our indoor plumbing and one for the cat.

Next we have to find some propane.

We found some at a sporting goods store and bought a 12-pack (about $24 worth).

We head home to deploy the heaters.

2:00PM: I put one heater in the wellhouse. These heaters have no thermistat, so I have to check on it every so often to make sure it doesn't overheat.

4:30PM: Hmm, what to do for dinner. Our stovetop works, so we use it to warm up some leftover frozen soup.

Evening: It gets cold inside. About 43F in one part of the house, and 10 degrees colder in another part. My parents have a generator, so we go there for warmth.

10:30PM: I return to the house with my dad to check on the temperature in the well. We adjust the lid so it stays warm but doesn't overheat.

Thursday

1:30AM: Power is restored at my parents' place.

5:00AM: Time to wake up. I need to get back to our well house by 6:30AM to replace the propane canister; it will be about spent by then. Roads are still very slick; 20-30MPH all the way. It's about 20 miles, so it takes awhile.

6:30AM: Replace the propane canisters. We have a new problem; the temperature in the old part of the house has fallen to 35F. This puts more plumbing at risk. The cat will probably want to go outside today anyway, so I take his heater, replace its canister, and set it up to try to save some more plumbing. Hopefully it will keep things enough above freezing.

Sunrise: Finally there's some beauty in an otherwise depressing picture.

I return to my parents place, the heat, and working Internet connection!

More to come, including photos, when we have power at home again...