Ice Storm Threatens Northeast (again)

[Josh]

I spent all day in the woods getting beat up from this stuff falling off trees with help of 35-40 mph winds, not ideal hunting conditions but I made it work.

 

[Hemingray]

Sorry for not getting back sooner... I have a rather motley collection of LED lights and flashlights, from the best of ARC and Elektrolumens, to lots of home made units and on-going experiments, from 5mm white Nichias to 1 and 5 Watt Luxeons and whatever else I can get my hands on... Yes, and even some Brinkmann stuff from Wal Mart. And a few from C Crane, that is what got me started with this addiction a few years ago.

A lot of my LED lighting is AC powered, so that was effectively dead during the outage. Favored form of AC powered LED light is to use one of the BG Micro IR Illuminator (36 LED) boards, and a simple AC capacitor coupled, full wave bridge and MOV protected circuit. Some of these have have almost 3 years continuous duty on them (less a few power outages).

Now that I have finally located some Arctic Silver Epoxy, I have some Cyan and RB 5 watt emitters that will be lighting up the way for me shortly.

I am anxiously awaiting the good 5 watt white emitters

/ed brown in NH

 

[Quickbeam]

I hate winter!!!!!!!

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">LOL! Why do you think I moved down here!

I used to live right up in Lux's neck of the woods. One too many winters. If it snows in North Carolina, they close the state.

 

[James S]

Hi Hemingray,

Question for you about the BGMicro boards. The "bigger" one says that the LED's are capable of sinking 100ma a piece, and the smaller board doesn't give details about the LED's voltage and current at all. But aren't IR LED's different than white ones? How are you modding these to make the best use of white LED's? What are you using for a power supply?

I like the idea of filling them with white ones!

Thanks,
James

 

[Chris T]

Lux:

Are you in CT? I'm in Newtown. The ice missed us here but I understand some folks are still out of power.

 

[Lux Luthor]

Originally posted by Chris T:
Lux:

Are you in CT? I'm in Newtown. The ice missed us here but I understand some folks are still out of power.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Nope, I'm in upstate NY, but I'm from CT and my mother and brother both got hit pretty good. Why do they get all the fun?

 

[brightnorm]

I have Canadian friends who live in a small town about a half hour from Ottawa, that was hit hard by that 1998 ice storm. Their entire town was evacuated by the national guard, and the only folks allowed to remain were those with independant generators that could supply heat and light

The devastation was extraordinary. It was quite disturbing to see those gigantic high voltage transmission towers collapsed like spaghetti, and the thought of millions of high current volts lashing about was pretty frightening.

Brightnorm

 

[Lux Luthor]

I remember that storm pretty well. It also hit the Lake Champlain region which is less than 2 hours north of me. I would have gone up to check it out, but just my luck, I was inbetween cars at the time, and could only take a bus.

I'm sure there's a point at which weather phenomenon turns from interesting and exciting to frightening and no longer amusing. This happened to me twice in my lifetime, and both involved tornadoes.

One crossed route 9 in CT while I was chasing after it (yes I do things like that). I didn't see it, but I knew from the radio it was there, and there were tons of people pulled over under highway overpasses. The clouds looked so bizarre, I thought I was going to pass right into it. The excitement I had turned into genuine fear.

Another time an F3 tornando hit Mechanicville about 15 miles north of me. It wiped out an entire hill of houses, leaving just the foundations. I went up there the next day, and what I saw was not the least bit funny.

 

[Charles Bradshaw]

Nothing like watching a funnel cloud pass directly overhead, is there?? (From my early Skywarn days.)

Overpasses are one of the worst places to hide under, as the wind velocity is accelerated.

I saw the videos of the 1998 Ice Storm in Canada, and my jaw hit the floor when I saw those HV towers collapsed like soggy spaghetti!!

 

[Lux Luthor]

Paul Kocin's calling for the possibility of hundreds of thousands of people without power.

Get ready you guys in PA, SE New York, and the Berkshires.

 

[Quickbeam]

Been there, done that.

Hope it misses.

 

[logicnerd411]

Ooh, look at the freezing rain outside...

Another "snow day" for my school's county. Some friends I was talking to this morning had no power.

 

[Charles Bradshaw]

We got a little bit of freezing rain here (very little).

 

[PlayboyJoeShmoe]

I saw ice (not too much) and snow (maybe 3") this weekend in Arkansas, Missouri, and Illinois.

Here we're gonna get some more rain.

Southern Ill. was about as pretty a place as I've seen. Western Ark ain't too bad either.

 

[LiteFreek]

I'm a survivor of that damn ice storm in '98 as we Mainers call it. I don't live in the boonies, really I don't, and we were without power for over 3 weeks, 23 days to be exact. I remember coming home from work the night it started thinking "oh boy we're gonna lose the power". Famous last words those were

So I'm kind of hoping this one is kind to us and only dumps the 8 inches of snow that it's forcasted to for here.

-The local LiteFreek

 

[The_LED_Museum]

Oh no, the insulators!!

:g

 

[sunspot]

Hey Craig. If the pole comes down, it's FREE insulators.

 

[Albany Tom]

Yep, this one was a fizzle. 8 inches of heavy wet snow, mostly plowed by the time I got up in the morning, no trouble getting to work by 9am.