Who says they weren't?
Actually, we got really lucky, and so did our neighbor. Here are some pictures from the storm my wife and I took yesterday. The forecast called for the usual kinds of really high winds on the hillside and the inlet, and we're kinda right between the mountains and the inlet, so we're in that category. I don't think I heard an exact wind speed from last night, but usually when we get these high winds (a couple times a year), they call for gusts of 70-80 miles per hour. Which is a lot and still is kinda rough, but usually only means a few power outages and branches everywhere. The radio broadcast I listened to said the winds were "significantly stronger than predicted", and based on what we saw (and what you will in a sec), I'd say more like 100.
Anyway, it was about 5:00 in the morning on Friday that I awoke to two very loud noises...can't really describe them, as I was just waking up. Of course, when I got up, I saw the power was out and the wind was howling everywhere (and a jillion UPS's beeping). We have those cantilever style of windows that angle out, so the wind often catches them. Well, with this storm, two of them were broken, meaning they were flung wide open and the arm on the bottom that goes in through the sill broke through. So the house is getting cold fast, so first priority for me is to secure the windows, at least the big one whose arm was damaged the most, the one to our computer office. [heroic moments] So in the dark of night, I get my cordless power drill and some screws and a flashlight and go outside with the wind and rain still raging and close the window and put some screws through the bottom to seal it down. I then notice a huge tree broken off and laying perfectly to block our driveway:
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File comment: Ain't goin' nowhere, pal...
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Since it was still all stormy, I didn't want to stay outside longer than I had to, so I just saw it from a distance and thought, "Holy fuck! We've been here for seven years and I've never seen the winds that bad...that was a healthy tree!"
So with the hatches battened down as best as I could, and with the assumption the UPS's were not going to last the storm or the outage, I quick hopped on Faibanx, saw Blue and Gizmo there, and told them there was a windstorm and I was shuttin' stuff down. So we're riding it out, don't really hear any more crashes but lots of the usual sounding 70mph type gusts. Oh, I did think as soon as I got back in that we still had water pressure (local well needs power) and hot water, so I got a shower just in time for the well's backup power system to go out, so I did manage to get a shower early Friday morning. After that, only a trickle of cold water comes out of our taps when there's no power...and, of course, no heat either.
Anyway, as light breaks, the wind and rain ease a bit, and I get that picture above of the tree across the driveway, and also see how lucky and unlucky our nextdoor neighbor is:
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The ground was apparently damp enough to not snap off his trees, but just uproot them...so now he's got half of his forest teetering perilously over his little A-frame house, and half of his fence ripped up from the uprooted trees. Anyway, fortunately our driveway for the duplex I live in is a U-shape, so I can get out just fine (once stupid neighbor moves car), and I head to work. See some more fences and stuff down on the way, and I stay at work until 3pm, hoping Jenn calls and says power is back on.
Well, turns out that just about all of the hillside and some other parts of town and out of town are without power...20,000 people, about 10% of the Anchorage population. I get home, and take care of some minor cleanup duties, and then hear the electric company say that power might not be back on until Saturday because there's so much work to do. So I run to a home supply store, and pick up a small kerosene heater and fuel, a small battery lantern, some Subway subs, and some dry goods from the supermarket to last us through Saturday in cas we're still without power. We stayed up until 1am calling in on my cell phone for updates and hoping the power would be back. Played some Yahtzee (which I won, and Jenn says I always win) and some blackjack as well (as I had just bought some playing cards on a whim...but couldn't find the damn Hoyle book!), and even watched part of a movie on my laptop. I was quite irritated to find that power was restored to neighbors across the street, and a good ways behind us...heck, all around us! I know our power lines looked good (as I checked them out Friday evening), so apparently we just had sucky luck and were on an older section of the grid...otherwise, we would have been back with power mid evening Friday. Suki!
Anyway, went to bed and left the bedroom light on, hoping that when the power came back on it would wake me up. I, uh, guess it eventually did.
Blinkyclox show that power came back on at 4:42, and I think I woke up just before 6am and got all the servers back up by 6:30...then made the first part of this post and went back to bed for a while.
So, gonna get some food, get cleaned up and finish the LD5 repairs from the 2008 Shitstorm(tm)...
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