East Coast October Snowstorm Thread

Anyone in the East reading this in the dark right now? Everyone holding up okay?

We lost power for about 5 hours yesterday evening, have a generator though so no big deal. A few 4" limbs in the back yard and a couple 1-3" in the front.

I'm in Nova Scotia. We had a lot of rain and winds up to 60 mph briefly, but no snow, fortunately. My power went out for about 20 minutes in the afternoon, so didn't need any lights (darn!). My sister, who lives about 10 miles away lost her power for about 1.5 hours and had one old snag on her property that needed to be pulled down before it could damage her house. All in all, I think it hit parts of the US north-east a lot harder than us.

1) We lost power Saturday afternoon at a little before two P.M., and have not gotten it back yet.

2) We have no heat.

3) We minimize opening and closing the doors. It was in the mid-twenties F (-4.4 C) last night, which presented an opportunity for my brother to use his brand new cold duty sleeping bag. He loves it!

4) New York State Electric and Gas changed their message from "We are aware of an electricity outage in your area affecting 507 customer(s). The estimated restoration time is unknown."

to

"We are aware of an electricity outage in your area affecting 1,044 customer(s). The estimated restoration time is Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 at 11:00 P.M."

However, my sister just saw a truck and some men working on our road, and said we may get power back tonight.

5) I have been using my Pelican 2440 for around the house duty, and special Malkoff "blackout model" running in an orange Mag 6D, a pleasant XP-G R4 5C. My mom has another black Mag 6D with a twin of that one, running an XP-G R4 5B. I find the 5B too cold and clinical, but like my 5C tremendously.

6) The sole 18650 that doesn't need to be replaced in my collection is charging in my Pila IBC as I type this in my local library. It lives in my gunga-modded L-Mini II with unknown efficiency bin XP-E 5C. My camera battery just finished charging, and I have some Eneloops charging in the famed Duracell Mobile charger, though I think it missed the termination signal on one of the cells (that, or the cell is bad).

7) I brought a surge protector/power strip, and the other patrons at the library love me.

8) The library is packed with people without power and heat.

9) I've been using a 4D lantern modded with milkyspit candle circuit in the kitchen in addition to the two 6D lights with low current Malkoffs.

10) I wish I still had my two "AA" single mode Black Diamond Moonlight headlamp.

11) These past few days are proud days indeed to be a Flashoholic. Special thanks to Mr. Malkoff and Mr. Milky for their excellent work.

12) We have a fire going in the fireplace, though inhaling all that smoke isn't fun when it backs up into the house.

13) I've been wanting to get a ceiling bounce blackout lantern for some time, and this event has galvanized me to get it down before the next one hits. One Big Beam 1001 (still looking for one below retail), one Calb 60aH LiFe cell, one XP-G R4 5C, and one driver to push it at 800mA with a forward voltage of 3.299 volts. I should get about 75 hours out of it that way. At five hours a night, that's 15 days at 272 lumens!

That's all there is to report now...my belly is telling me it is time to go hunt for food!

LEDAdd1ct said:

The estimated restoration time is Thursday, November 3rd, 2011 at 11:00 P.M."

Click to expand...

I've been there, hope you've got plenty of blankets and a battery-powered radio for morale..

Thanks for the good wishes. I find it quite exciting, and of course, love the flashlight component. My brother is enjoying splitting wood for exercise, and I think to an extent my dad likes the fact his home brew/modded UPS with 12v SLA cells is doing an admirable job of powering the aerators to keep the fish alive. My mom has considerably less patience for the whole affair.

I have a Grundig radio with very smooth sound, and a small Sony that takes one "AA" cell. My brother has been enjoying logging the time, temperature and humidity by hand in the dining room, and playing Scrabble with my mom (he's a Scrabble demon).

I ordered a military surplus blanket from western NY about 18 months ago, and love it. A wool hat, and some soft PJs, and sleeping is actually enjoyable.

The only thing that really pains me is the food component. I miss the toaster, oven, and microwave, though hot oatmeal and tea over the fire are fun. It's like camping at home!

I'll check back in later. Hope everyone else is faring alright.

Nothing about the weather seemed particularly out of the ordinary here in NYC: subways ran fine, and it was business as usual throughout. Went out to a bar to celebrate my friend's birthday amongst friends, rain and snow bounced off my new rain jacket, and had an excellent time staying warm indoors afterwards.

I'm just outside Springfield, MA. About 1/2 of western MA is without power. Some will get power back within the week, but others may need to wait longer. My family was able to stay warm at a friend's house. This is a tough one -- especially for the unprepared or under prepared.

- Chris

my friends in the hudson valley have a power outage with an estimated fix on nov 2nd. they do have gas heater but the fan that circulates the heat runs on electricity. lol they moved to a hotel.
family in the same area had no problem at all.

friends in nj have the power out with no estimation.

alot of trees still had leaves to hold onto the wet snow making alot of tree damage.

to be honest. i'm a bit jealous. i don't know why. i guess it's why people camp.

We had hot dogs and beans over the fireplace on a rack borrowed from the deck grill. The dogs and beans were delicious; the acrid, choking smoke and stink less so.

The power came back on around nine P.M., though we didn't turn on the front lights soon enough to prevent getting egged by a bunch of kids.

Flashlight camping was fun, but I am glad to be able to walk around without shivering.

Hope everybody is doing okay and gets power back soon.

My parents in CT have been without power since the storm and don't expect to get it back until at least monday; they have some lights (like the malkoff maglite, eagletac p100a2 and the gerber light listed below, but the malkoff light is not really a low enought output light for this extended outage. They also have a few LED Lanterns as well; I jist wish i didn't hoard all of my lights here with me because they could really use my l mini ii given that it can use the dozen or so cells from laptop batteries that are in the house. I am currently living in the Boston area and there weren't any outages in the immediate area, but some hotels did lose power.

L-Mini II circuit on low in whichever light you stick it in is a wonderful thing!

Been without power since Saturday / 5 days / 120 hours. With all the heavy wet snow falling on the trees still covered in leaves, here in Northern NJ, a nice big branch fell on my power line and it's been lying across my driveway since then.

Luckily just a few weeks ago I had my APC UTS6H installed, and had a chance to test it out with my twin paralleled Eu2000i, and it worked beautifully. Now they are powering all of the nice things I need to live comfortably in my house, including my forced air natural gas furnace, refridgerator, coffee maker, microwave, TV/tivo/AV, office computers, FiOS internet, master bedroom/bath, some overhead lighting and some outdoor lighting. Not all at the same time, but probably could do most of those at the same time The APC UTS is fantastic in terms of shedding load if I draw too much from the generators, and is very helpful for preventing them from tripping.

The only nuisance has been refueling the gennies every 6-8 hours, but hopefully fedex will be delivering my 5 gallon extended fuel tank from wisesales today. PSE&G seems to have forgotten about my power being out, as almost the entire town has had it restored except for me. They are giving a worst case Saturday estimate -- earlier this week they were saying Wednesday. It's a shame they have a monopoly on utilities or I would have changed to another after this storm.

Anyway, I can't say enough about how happy I am with the combination of the 2xEu2000i and APC UTS6H... Highly recommended.

CT got hosed bad from Irene and this snow storm--mainly with 600,000-800,000 without power, and many for as long as 5-7 days. Everyone is ripping the electric company (CT Light & Power) big time. Southeast CT where I'm at got hit hard during Irene, but went unscathed with the snow storm. It's worse losing power in freezing temps, and I hope no one had their pipes freeze and break.

And meanwhile here in central Canada not a flake of snow and balmy +10C temps.I think that works out +50 on the old scale.Although a Colorado Low is heading this way(thank you very much mdocod)!

I'm hoping there will be no snow until Dec-it makes these nasty Canadian winters much more bearable.

I just found out yesterday my aunt in NJ has been without power since the storm hit. She finally got back her telephone service yesterday.

My friend in the county just north of us has no power, heat, or running water. They have a well, and with the days of raising and lowering the bucket by hand being behind us, without the electric pump, they can't even use their toilets without importing water.

Got power back last night. Some friends of ours in CT might have to wait another week -- though they are kind of out in the sticks.

- Chris

This CL&P map still shows massive outages. As of yesterday (11/4), still had 310,000 without power. Around 215,000 as of today.

http://outage.cl-p.com/outage/outagemap.aspx

Lost all power(heat/hotwater) and internet on 10/29;restored Thursday evening 11/3.
Wifey was not so upset with my flashlight collection then.
My 3 year old boy had great fun the whole time and I enjoyed grilling everything we had to eat. Even made pancakes and eggs on the ol' Weber.
Never even missed the boob tube.
Today, I grill kangaroo tenderloins!