Outage Outrage

I should have known this would happen.

Before the October Surprise snowstorm, it looked like our earlier power outage problem had been fixed for good. And until this October 29, it had been. We had no outages (except for a flicker or two in early January) for all of 2011. The three-day outage caused by the storm was understandable. Since the electricity was restored, though, the problem with frequent brownouts and blackouts has returned with a vengeance. With one month to go in 2011, it looks like we could have as many outages for the year as we did in all of 2010 (sixteen). In November 2011, following the electrical restoration, we had three blackouts (all but one of them momentary), and on November 16, the lights flickered three times.

In all of but one of these instances (that being the blackout that lasted more than a moment, when it was clear out), it was raining outside. It wasn't raining hard any of these times, it wasn't a wind-driven rain or anything like that, it was just . . . raining. Once again, my block is back to a condition where a power outage can go off even with light-to-moderate rainfall. The October 29 snowstorm obviously opened an old wound in the electrical delivery system in my neighborhood.

That does it. It's supposed to rain again Tuesday. The power could go off again even in a drizzle or a passing shower. What is this, 1901? If it goes off even for a second - as it did this past Tuesday - I'm going to complain to Public Service Electric & Gas, our power utility, about it. My only consolation is that we at least don't get our power from Jersey Central Power & Light. After the storm, PSE&G restored our power in three days; some JCP&L customers affected by the storm had to wait up to two weeks.

Incidentally, many trees that were not shorn of limbs or toppled by the October storm still got damaged pretty badly. Several town managers in New Jersey are going to be busy for weeks or months determining the health of these trees. Some of them might lose limbs or fall altogether during the next big storm. And we still have half of a trunk of a tree on town property dangling over our back yard.