Power outages on the east coast

[Sir Edward]

For those not keeping up with the news, the thunderstorms on Friday night knocked out power to millions of people in the DC area, from Baltimore MD down to Richmond VA, and from WV through to the coast. They're saying it might have been a "derecho", which is a straight-line wind system with rapidly moving thunderstorms, with tornado-like forces. It hits without warning.

It's been completely patchy, with areas of downed power and other areas that are fine, all along the same roads. Your power might be down, and your neighbor 2 blocks away is fine.

Anyway, my house has been without power since Friday night, and the phone service is still down as well. Verizon Wireless was broken until Saturday afternoon, and even now cellular service is mostly OK but somewhat spotty for all of the carriers.

At my job, they emailed out an announcement last night that only one of their buildings had power in the WV location (out of a dozen or more).

We've slowly watched power get restored to areas around here. Each half-day or so, more traffic lights and businesses are getting powered up around here. But lots of residential areas are still out. The local grocery store is still on generator.

Anyway, I'll only be here on the forum occasionally until things get fixed, and this is my first time back on since Friday. My dad's place (15 minutes from my home) is powered on, and that's about the best I can get right now, other than using my cell-phone.

I hope everyone else is doing well during this mess.

[Sir Wolf]

yup we have power but not mom.

i was camping during that storm. green sky's and huge wind storm!!! i swear a tornado hit near us. a tree just missed 2 camp sites and a willys jeep. lightning hit and went vertical on the mt sides. it was wild sitting in a GP Medium tent holding the side poles!!!!!

[Sir Edward]

I saw Joe Metz post on facebook that he was without power until mid-day yesterday too. He's pretty far from here. I forget where exactly.. Indiana or somewhere over there.

The storm was pretty widespread.

[Thorsteinn]

No rain here.

In fact no rain for... more than a month I think, but my family out east has been nailed by this but they're fine.

[Sir Edward]

We got power, phone, and internet back today, after about 3 days of outage. There are plenty of areas that are still dark, however, and I'm suspecting it will take all week for the rest of it.

[Lord Dane]

All's good in New England. All that rain was good for my fishing pond.

[Sir Wolf]

my mom and office got power around 9 last night. gotta spend today redoing the wireless network sighhhhhhhhhh

[Sir Edward]

My rack-UPS didn't come back up on the network. But I think other than the food in the fridge, that was my only casualty over here.

The UPS is still working, but the network management and control logic is hosed, and the fan is no longer turning. Damn, it'll be expensive to replace this thing. But it's still providing power for the moment.

[Sir Wolf]

i can't seem to figure out what is going on either. i can see the extender but it is not currently letting the internet thru it.

also, mom's AC died today sigh.... never going to get a break.

[Sir Edward]

When it rains, it pours.

I don't remember how your network is set up. It's always possible something got damaged if there was a harsh spike in the line just as power was going down. Was everything on surge protectors and/or UPS?

[Sir William]

My power came back on late Monday night...it blinked out within minutes of the storm hitting us.  It took out most of Bowie, power-wise, as well as all of the surrounding towns.  There were, of course, a few exceptions, but they were so few and far between as to make no difference.  I did note that several neighborhoods bordering my own had power restored as early as Sunday evening...we didn't have cell service until Sunday ourselves.

It was of course uncomfortable in the house, especially in the upper levels, but my mancave didn't get above 85 so it was bearable...just barely.  Our empty condo had power on Sunday- we sorely needed the break by then.  I do not think my wife would've fared well in medieval times...I can deal with the heat, eventually. 

I am glad to be back though...funny how you don't miss things until you can no longer get to them.

[Sir James A]

I got really lucky, and had power the whole time, aside from a few 5-10 second bursts of outage the night of the storm. However, I didn't get TV or internet until earlier this week.

Ironically, I lost a tree during the storm, and spent all day saturday dismantling the rest of it and chopping it enough to get it in the truck and take it to the recycle center - which was closed due to a power outage. The tree we lost is the only one I really care much about (the cherry tree). I decided since this is the second tree lost in the second storm, I'm going to be proactive instead of reactive - and took down 3 more trees. And, uhh, while I had the saw out, lopped off 10 or 12 bushes. Hopefully the yard will be much easier to manage later this year, it's been too much to handle the years I've lived here and always looks a wreck. So while people sat indoors without power in 90* weather, I sat outside in 100* temps for 8 or 9 hours; thank goodness I had the cooler house to come back to.

I left the thermostat at 78* - I think those weekends in armor helped quite a bit. The weather didn't affect me nearly as much as the lack of internet did.

[Bernarr]

I'm up north of you guys, right outside of Atlantic City. Our power went out 3am Saturday morning at my apartment complex, but the office power was fine. They got around to fixing it 4am-ish on Monday morning, but I think there are still a few small areas still without power.