Anyone without power this weekend?

We had a pretty good ice storm here in Iowa this weekend. I heard on the radio that alliant engergy said this was the worst ice storm they have seen. I live in cedar rapids but I took my wife and daughter down to my parent's house two hours away in Pella this weekend because I was going to put an engine in my wife's car which is down there. I knew they said the weather was going to be bad but didn't think too much about it. While in the middle of working on my wife's car, the power goes out. No shop lights, no power to the compressor but luckily I had my Thor, AE power light, E1L and energizer led headlight so I could still see. I had to get my wife's car finished this weekend and couldn't stop just because the lights went out. I called the power company and they said that we were in line. Amazingly, about a hour and a half later, the power was back on. My mother in law lost power in cedar capids from 6:20pm saturday untill around 5:00pm on Sunday. One of my wife's friend's said she might not have power for two weeks. There were trees down everywhere and on the way back to cedar rapids, we saw about 15 telephone poles lying on the ground right in a row along the highway. Pretty crazy. This was a good weekend for flashlights. They were even saying on the radio to use flashlights instead of candles so you don't burn your house down. I did manage to forget most of my flashlights at my mother in law's house so I called her to tell her so she could use them. Too bad I found them scattered around, some just laying on the floor when we got home. Must have been too much work to put them back. Everything is charged back up and ready to go again if needed.

Yup. No power now for two days.

I'm at the Ely library where my wife works as a librarian.

They've got power and internet.

I'd hang out here all day except that our only heat is the fireplace and it needs constant attention. The good news is that we have plenty of firewood, rechargable NiMHs, LED flashlights and a battery powered radio and little TV. All of which run on my NiMHs! (AA and AAA)

The temps this week will range between 16F and 33F so it will be fun keeping the house warm!

The paper this morning says 2500 power poles down in this region.

Power may not be restored for a full week.

Probably the worst time to have an extended power outage when your running extremely low on battery inventory


:sigh: down here in Florida maybe one flicker here and there...

*

just missed the recent ice storm in Okla/Ark/Missouri.

got backup power gensets and heat with wood.

No power outage but gave my Onan it's monthly run, the more I test it the less chance I'll ever need it. A guy named Murphy told me that!!!

Woo Hoo!

Power back on!

Total duration: about 50 hours.

There are still about 100,000 Iowans without power as of this moment.

I've been thinking that if I ever put up solar panels, I would do a "grid connected" system. Although, with such a system, if the grid goes down, you still don't have power.

Makes an "off-grid" set up seem pretty tempting...

We were down for about 10 hours and cable (including internet) just came back today, out for about 56 hrs.

Thank goodness I had a light! Not to mention the dozen others and the 30 or so backup cells. Sad part is that I didn't even burn through one cell with my ML1. I guess that's attributed to the very useful and long-burning low.

Yeah. The lights we used were:

2 Infinity Ultras
1 Princeton Tec Aurora 3 AAA Headlamp
1 Eveready folding camping lantern
1 Osram 2 AA square fluorescent ("Radio Shack")
1 Mity-Bright 3 AAA goose-neck "book light"
1 Dorcy 1 AAA $6 Walmart (kept in my pocket all the time)
1 Maglite 2 AA with BB400 (used about 10 minutes)
1 Streamlight ProPoly Lux (used for about 5 minutes to look around outside)

It was the dim little lights that did all the work.

At night we had the Infinities on lanyards around our necks. The folding lantern was really great for lighting up a big area (although a little dimly). The Mity-Bright really proved its worth too. It has a clamp and that gooseneck means it can be pointed anywhere in any direction to light up a book or a game or whatever. The head lamp is really great if you have a lot to do and need both hands.

We lost power for about 45 seconds. :huh2: It was just long enough to think about how to react to it and then it was over. We were lucky.

Cedar Rapids..... one of the moderators Rothrandir lives there.

Sunday my power came back on after it was off for 6 days due to the storm that came through S. Oregon and far N. California. We had 4' of snow in about a day.

Luckily I didn't have any power outages, but had my T4, Mag 3D, MagLED 3D and SC HID (Sam's Club HID) on hand with fresh/fully charged batteries. Of course, another storm is -a comin'!

bogus1, that does not sound fun at all. glad your back online power wise.

Bogus1 said:

Sunday my power came back on after it was off for 6 days due to the storm that came through S. Oregon and far N. California. We had 4' of snow in about a day.

Click to expand...

I was actually about to go on a road trip to western Iowa with a buddy of mine last weekend. He ended up having to work, so we decided to put off the trip for a while. Good thing, with all the bad weather and power outages.