Ice storms are kicking my ass

C

Camcorder.

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So, my 60 ft. sycamore is toast. Just like almost every other tree around here. I'm almost sick over it. Over 400,000 customers are without power. As I sit here, I'm typing on a computer powered by a generator. Some people have been told it will be no less than 5 days before their electricity will be restored. Some may be forced to wait only 2. This is the worst ice storm I've witnessed.

Cable lines are laying across the road in several spots, some downed by tree limbs which were felled by no less than an inch of ice. Other lines just collected too much themselves. I got out today to get some pictures, and I'll post them soon.
 
I guess you got all of our snow this year. As of right now we have less than an inch of snow, and it's already melted once.

nature can be a bitch sometimes.
 
During 2004 there was a period in the summer when I didn't have power for 5 days b/c of Hurricane Charlie, then another 5 days for Jeanne and then one day for Frances but since then, no Hurricane, no outages.

If you want I will send some of our weather up there, it has been 80 degrees and sunny.
 
Here, take some of my trees. They're all roughly the same height as your sycamore.

Anywho, weather sucks it hard. After it snowed 10 inches at my house last week, it rained 12 inches and flooded my county and a few counties south of mine. My basement was filled with a few inches of water, it sucked :(

:eek:And that's global warming for ya!:eek:
 
Ice Storm was a good movie :)

Although it doesn't look like so much fun to actually have to live in.

I can't wait to see the pictures though I bet it looks gorgeous!
 
Didn't sleep very well last night. I had 3 dogs helping keep me warm, but I still had to breathe, and the air was so cold I think it made me sick. We'll see if I can go a few more days without crashing my superhuman immune system.

Anyway, picture time! Please forgive me if these are too large. My computing needs aren't exactly met on this particular computer as far as image editing software goes, so I'm doing the best I can with what I've got.

First is a picture of the limbs from my aforementioned devastated sycamore, still covered in ice. You might also notice the windchime in the foreground is almost but not quite ice free.

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This is the tree that blocked me in all day Monday. I haven't taken any updated photos, but it's since been dispatched as well.

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This is a broader picture of the sycamore. Makes me sad. Still.

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This is just a picture of an ice covered transformer. Enjoy.

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Wow, it sure is pretty, even though it's sad that it's down!

I must say though, I'd love to be in that sort of weather right now. Yesterday it was foggy and wet and about 40 degrees. Today it was mildly humid and about 80 degrees. Tomorrow it's supposed to storm and be around 45-50. I mean COME ON! It can't stay like one region of temperature for a couple of days?! Arghh!

Anyways, sorry about your tree, it's good you appreciate it though, since all I have down here are cedars.
 
Cedars are kind of invasive, but they do smell good when you beat the ice off of them with a hammer. Maybe there's a market for something like that.

EDIT: I just found a link that sures up my numbers and kind of updates the status. 600,000 are without power, and it may be a week before service will be restored. Here's a link to the story: LINK. It does indeed look like a war zone, and it sounded like one as all the limbs were breaking. A week to 10 days...can you imagine? Damn.
 
Oh people love the cedar smell, I'm sure. There's a lot of candles and incense and stuff like that have the cedar-y smell. However when you live around it, it's not that great. :P
 
Those are really awesome pictures.
Man, 10 more days without power. Don't freeze to death! Do you at least have a space heater you could hook up to the generator?
 
My parents went a month without power after Hurricane Frances, in 909-100 degree weather and humidity of 80% or more. And it does not cool off at night in Florida, good times.
 
Or even, if you had the supplies to do this and a little skill, you could hook up your furnace to the generator. Most furnaces (unless it's basically brand new, then I don't know) only need electricity to run the fan and the thermostat controls. Doesn't need much.

That should work if you still have natural gas. (I'm assuming you have a natural gas furnace, of course.)

EDIT: I know with my furnace, there's a main wire coming into it from the side which comes from a switch on the wall. If I had to, I could take apart that switch, attach the wires that go to the furnace to wires on a plug, plug that into a generator and I'd have heat. Then again, I don't have a generator.
 
I'm actually running 3 small electric space heaters and sleeping in a hoodie and under 2 blankets, all while having an actual 3 Dog Night. Unfortunately, the furnace is electric and takes more juice than we could generate while still running the refrigerator, a computer, the coffee pot, etc., even with the backup generator running tandem. I did study electricity, and I'm fairly certain I could rig up a 220v output, but that would leave us ass-out for running anything else at the same time.

In any case, from the hill we could see several crews working until late into the night last night, so I'm only assuming it won't be long until we're back up and running. Cable, however, will be out even longer. Lines are down all over the neighborhood. This is why I've just upgraded my Netflix subscription to 3 at a time. Looks like now's a good time to buy stock in popcorn.
 
Oh yeah an electric furnace would take a fair bit more power. Well, at least you have some source of heat.

Did you have a fair sized stock on fuel, at least?
 
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